by: Kate Norman
Much of Kibbutz Alumim was destroyed on October 7 by Hamas terrorists.
Tuesday, 30 January 2024 | An Israeli start-up company has developed a robot greenhouse harvester in order to solve the shortage of agricultural workers in the Jewish state.
Israeli start-up MetoMotion developed the Greenhouse Robotic Worker [GRoW], after its founding in 2017 with funding from the Israeli Innovation Authority and Trendlines, a company that invests in agrotech and medtech.
The first target market is greenhouse tomatoes, according to MetoMotion.
GRoW is an autonomous robot that uses a 3D vision system to help growers identify the ripeness of crops, harvest them and keep a collection of data to analyze the crops.
The driverless vehicle navigates autonomously between rows of crops with sensors that detect obstacles. Once the vehicle has reached the end of a row, its trailer full of tomatoes is removed and sent to the warehouse, and the vehicle is directed to another row with a smartphone.
GRoW is equipped with dual robotic arms, allowing it to harvest on both sides of the row at the same time. Its 3D vision capabilities allow growers to identify and select the level of ripeness of the produce that they want to harvest.
The robotic arms then cut the tomatoes, drop them onto a conveyor belt on the machine and deposit them into boxes.
The 3D vision provides critical analytics information onto a greenhouse dashboard, allowing the grower to analyze crop information and even predict future crop yields.
The system can reduce labor hours by 80%, according to the MetoMotion website, and save growers up to 50% in harvesting costs by replacing agricultural workers with robots.
It can also increase efficiency, producing up to a 15% improvement in crop yield and reduce the spread of infectious crop diseases by 50%.
GRoW won the GreenTech Amsterdam Robot Challenge in 2022.
The director of agriculture at Kibbutz Alumim, a community in southern Israel near the boundary with Gaza, was looking for a solution to the labor shortage in kibbutz [collective community] greenhouses.
The director, Michael Amar, discovered MetoMotion, based in Yokne’an Illit, northern Israel. Amar reached out and agreed with MetoMotion to establish experimental greenhouses at Kibbutz Alumim.
They prepared greenhouses, Amar told Israel21c, ordered the seedlings and were preparing to install the first robot when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023.
Thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded that morning, attacking kibbutzim and Jewish communities in Southern Israel, including Kibbutz Alumim.
Amar and his agricultural team defended the kibbutz from Hamas terrorists who entered the farms and prevented them from entering the residential area, Israel21c reported. Some 20 workers from Thailand were killed in the fighting.
Amar’s son, 22-year-old Nitai, a captain in the Israeli military, was killed in battle that day at the Southern Regional Division base.
The MetoMotion team visited Amar and his family to sit shiva [mourning for seven days] with them for Nitai at a hotel in Netanya, where Alumim families were evacuated after the brutal invasion.
MetoMotion CEO Adi Nir told Israel21c that while sitting shiva, Amar started talking with him about rebuilding the project and moving forward.
Two weeks later, Nir and his team went back to the hotel in Netanya after receiving an invitation from Amar to continue the work.
“We were sitting with people who had experienced unbelievable horror on October 7, and all they could talk about was rebuilding and continuing what they started,” Nir told Israel21c.
Unfortunately, the fate of the research and development greenhouses at Alumim is unknown, as the site is a closed military zone and much of the kibbutz was burned down.
Amar and his team joined with the agricultural staff at nearby Kibbutz Be’eri—the most hard-hit kibbutz on October 7—to team up and move forward by establishing MetoMotion greenhouses at Be’eri.
MetoMotion CEO Nir told Israel21c: “For us, this partnership is much deeper than the usual business deal. It’s like a mission for us to help these guys. This is our small way to help and we hope it will come true. The story did not end yet.”
Though the exact path forward is not yet set in stone, Amar told Israel21c: “This is Zionism, rebuilding ourselves. We need to pick up our agriculture again and restart the project.
Posted on January 30, 2024
Source: (Bridges for Peace, January 30, 2024)
Photo Credit: Avi1111/Wikimedia.org
Photo License: Wikimedia
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