The seasonal workers of the future: a company in El Poal presents an apple-picking robot with intelligent drones

During the XXX Jornadas Fructícolas del IRTA held in Mollerussa, the company Tallers Moreno, based in El Poal, presented an apple-picking robot capable of working autonomously 24 hours a day.

The innovative system consists of eight drones equipped with artificial intelligence, which identify, select and pick fruit according to its colour and size. Each drone acts as a “virtual worker”, guided by vision sensors and an LED lighting system that allows it to operate even at night.

“The sector's great challenge is the lack of labour at harvest time, and with this robot we want to help meet that need,” explained Sergi Moreno, technical director of Tallers Moreno. The company has been developing the project together with IRTA for four years, with the aim of bringing automation to the fields. “We have not yet reached the same productivity as manual work, but this is the way forward,” he added.

From IRTA, Lluís Asín, head of the Fruit Growing programme, stressed that the innovation represents “an important leap for the sector's competitiveness”. According to its figures, between 30 and 40% of the production cost of an orchard corresponds to harvesting, so solutions of this kind can drastically reduce costs and improve profitability.

In addition to the robot, the conference also served to present SevenGip, a new chemical product that reduces the number of flowers on peach trees and can make manual thinning up to 60% cheaper, another significant advance towards more efficient and sustainable agriculture.

IRTA's director general, Josep Usall, underlined the value of this event, which has spent 30 years bringing innovation closer to the sector. “We have grown by responding to the real challenges faced by fruit growers, and three decades later we remain a key meeting point between science and the countryside,” he said.