Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have created a robot that can pick raspberries and trained it using fake fruit.

Considered a particularly difficult task, picking raspberries involves multiple skills, according to the researchers. The robot must be able to determine which fruit is ripe and be capable of picking it without damaging it.

Source: EPFL

Because field training designed to teach the robot to pick the delicate fruit can be costly and time consuming, the researchers devised a faster and less expensive approach to train the robot using fake raspberries.

Outfitted with graspers, cameras and software for identifying ripe fruit, the team taught the robot to pick fake fruit in the lab.

To see the robot pick raspberries in the lab, watch the accompanying video that appears courtesy of EPFL.

The robot is detailed in the article, Lab2Field transfer of a robotic raspberry harvester enabled by a soft sensorized physical twin, which appears in the journal Communications Engineering