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Israeli startup rolls out first AI robot for picking tomatoes

(Image Credit Google)
Adi Nir, the founder of the Israeli company MetoMotion, grew up in a kibbutz and began working in agriculture at a young age. Like many others, he left the fields to pursue a career in technology. He went back to his roots to create the first tomato-picking robot in history as a result of the severe global lack of people who can pick fruits and vegetables. Fewer and fewer people are employed in agriculture, which, according to World Bank figures, only employs 5% to 10% of the workforce in the European Union and euro area and 6% in OECD countries. According to the data, barely 1% of Israeli workers are involved in agriculture. In addition, labor costs are a problem for Israeli farmers. Few Israelis work in agriculture, so growers must import foreign laborers to complete the demanding manual labor. However, the number of permits the government grants is limited, which raises wages. “We hear many times about farmers leaving the crops to rot because there is no one to pick them,” Nir told The Times of Israel. “Today you can’t grow tomatoes like 30 years ago — for them to be high quality and competitive in pricing, you need to do some transformation.” [caption id="attachment_87835" align="aligncenter" width="740"]AI robot tomato-picker AI robot tomato-picker (Image: RootAI)[/caption] Nir spent 16 years managing R&D operations and creating cutting-edge system technology in the aerospace and defense sector after earning his engineering degree from Haifa's Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Nir founded the Yokne'am-based startup MetoMotion in 2017 with the goal of creating a robot that can pick labor-intensive fruits quickly and effectively. Nir had become aware that the shortage of labor in the farming workforce and the associated costs were unsustainable. He also drew on his tech experience in the aerospace industry to accomplish this. Since that time, the Trendlines Group, an Israeli venture capital firm, Ridder, a Dutch investor, and other investors have contributed a total of $10 million to MetoMotion. “The idea was to help farmers solve the labor shortage problem as more and more young people are seeking more advanced occupations where they don’t need to use their hands or back,” Nir said. Also read: Microsoft Set to Use OpenAI Tech to Write Emails for Busy Salespeople

By Awanish Kumar

I keep abreast of the latest technological developments to bring you unfiltered information about gadgets.

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