Mechanized harvesting has been adopted for use with many large-scale crops, especially grains such as corn and wheat. However, harvesters for certain crops, such as vegetables and fruits, have not developed into a completely mechanized model for various reasons. For many crops, the cost of workers to hand pick crops is so low that mechanized picking remains economically unfeasible with prior devices. In addition, crops such as vegetables and certain fruits present a difficult physical barrier in that the crops are not easily picked using prior designs. A further complication in many industries is that current devices utilize a destructive picking mechanism, where the plant is destroyed to the extent it will not yield crop again, whereas hand-picking may allow subsequent harvesting from the same plant.
For many crops, such as vegetables, the cost of hand-picking is rising as fewer and fewer workers are available to pick more and more acreage. Prior art machines designed for picking vegetables suffer from several flaws. First, many of the prior art devices require several operators and or highly skilled operators. Second, most prior art devices gather up the plants and remove them from the ground, separating the crop from the plant and discarding the remainder as refuse. In addition, a third issue with prior art devices is that for many types of vegetables, these devices result in a damaged crop. Finally, prior art devices have required very precise plantings to be compatible with the device and such prior art devices typically provide a low tolerance for variability in the position of the plants.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds