This Week in Engineering explores the latest in engineering from academia, government and industry.
Episode Summary:
While large-scale farming of crops such as grains and pulses lend themselves readily to automation, a major portion of the global agriculture industry is based on orchard and nursery crops. These industries are still highly labour-intensive, but small Philadelphia-based startup called Burro has developed an autonomously guided vehicle that’s designed to assist human pickers in fruit, vegetable and nursery operations. The devices shuffle the crops of the fields or orchards, freeing humans to pick, and pack.
There are many luxury electric vehicle offerings on the market today, and a new, high-performance rival has just entered production. Lucid Motors has rolled the first vehicle off the firm’s Casa Grande, Arizona assembly line, with customer deliveries expected to begin in late October. The $77,000 Lucid Air carries an EPA estimated range of over 500 miles and can be charged to 300 miles of range in 20 minutes. The company is already expanding production facilities to produce a new SUV product in 2023.
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Transcript of this week’s show:
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Segment 1: In commercial agriculture, growing and harvesting crops is usually associated with products that are adapted to farm machinery: grains and pulses for example. But a significant part of the industry is the fruit and vegetable sector, which includes crops that are difficult to adapt to automation. While robotic tractors, sprayers and combines are in development, is there an intermediate technology that could boost productivity where crops are hand picked?
Philadelphia-based startup Burro thinks so and has created an agricultural equivalent to the autonomously guided vehicles now commonly seen in factories. The market is significant, as even with today’s technology, crops such as table grapes and berries employ 80% of US crop workers performing manual tasks. And labor shortages are a serious problem. In California, where most specialty crops in the US are grown, the number of farmworkers has declined by 40% over the last decade due to a combination of hard-working conditions, regulation and increasing wages.
Burro has currently deployed 90 robots in table grape operations, covering 100 to 300 miles a day autonomously, six days a week. The robots replace farmworkers handling wheelbarrows of picked fruit, allowing them to pick and pack with a continuous flow while the Burro AGV’s carry the product out of the field. In tests, one Burro enabled six people to harvest up to 40% more fruit per day, offering a two-month return on investment.
The robots use an AI-driven proprietary autonomy stack that perceives and navigates through complex outdoor environments using computer vision and high precision GPS. The system creates digital tracks through fields for repeatability in variable weather and lighting conditions. Devices can also follow designated individuals through any setting without active remote control. Are robotic farm wagons the beginning of widespread automation in the fruit and nursery crop sectors? One notable investor? Toyota Ventures.
Segment 2: It’s always noteworthy when Job One rolls off the line at a new build auto assembly plant, and last week that honour went to Lucid Motors, who completed their first electric vehicle in the firm’s assembly plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. The facility, which Lucid calls Advanced Manufacturing Plant 1, was formerly commissioned in a ceremony with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. The AMP – 1 factory was built on the 590-acre Casa Grande site in less than a year and is the first greenfield all EV assembly plant to be built in North America.
The factory is currently assembling Lucid Air Dream Edition models, and will also build Grand Touring, Touring, and Air Pure versions of the luxury sedan. First customer deliveries of vehicles are scheduled for late October. Current production vehicles are built with a 112-kWh battery pack which delivers an EPA range of 516 miles. According to the company, this 4.6 miles per kilowatt hour efficiency leads the industry. Vehicle performance specs are very high: maximum horsepower is listed at 1111, delivering 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 9.9 seconds. The company claims that 300 miles of charge can be added to the depleted battery in 20 minutes.
The automotive industry is notoriously hard on startup manufacturers. Tesla has taken a decade to reach their current state, with Elon Musk openly stating that the firm was hovering near bankruptcy before the launch of Model 3. With Tesla establishing a market for high end EV sedans, however, Lucid may find the path easier.
Lucid’s product has a starting MSRP of $77,400 before state or Federal EV credits, and some 13,000 vehicles have been reserved to date. The company is optimistic, and has already programmed expansion, working towards an additional 2,850,000 ft.² of floor space to boost sedan production and launch a new SUV product called Gravity in 2023. The EV marketplace is sure getting crowded.
