Orchard Machinery Corporation introduced its first driverless almond tree shaker last week at Agriland in Chowchilla to a handful of observers from as far away as Australia and Europe.
Partnering with Bonsai Robotics, a fairly new company based out of San Jose, the team unveiled the first autonomous almond tree shaker to feature a new mechanical head unit, as well as a vision based software allowing the shaker to operate without the assistance of GPS.
Powered by a 175-horsepower tier V cummins motor, supplied with five overlapping cameras, the shaker is able to identify the difference between trees, posts, animals and other obstacles as it references the world’s largest image database, compliments of Bonsai Robotics.