Robots powered by solar panels are harvesting tea in eastern China's Zhejiang province. Robots collecting Longjing tea, which is grown in the country and known for its quality, has been a savior for the villagers. Longjing tea, also known as West Lake Dragon Well tea, is a type of green tea. This tea, which is one of the 10 most famous teas in China, is known for its color, aroma and soft taste. It is also more difficult to collect than other teas.
Jia Jiangming, from the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology Department of Mechanical Engineering, who was part of the team that developed the tea picking robot, said, “Beautiful forms of a single-leaf bud or a two-leaf bud are generally considered to be quality tea with a certain reputation. Because the process of collecting such leaves is extremely difficult to do by machines, a great deal of manual labor is required,” he says. However, it is very difficult to find a young population in the region who will work to collect tea. Therefore, the tea picking robot is of great importance for manufacturers.
Working with the aid of binocular stereo vision, the robot determines the target bud and leaf, cuts it precisely, and fills the basket by sucking the leaves with a negative pressure pipette. The bud and leaf identification accuracy of the robot, which was developed in the fifth generation this year, has reached 86 percent and the collection efficiency has increased to 1,5 seconds per tea leaf. Chen Jianneng, one of the members of the team, said, “The new generation tea picker robot can perform as well as humans,” and added that although it is still in the experimental stage, they plan to improve the practicality of the robot, so that the tea industry can benefit from the tangible results of modern mechanization in the future.