OMC shaking things up with driverless almond shaker

Angel L. de Jesus Jr./The Madera Tribune

The team behind the creation, from left, John Krum, Emerson Knapp, Kevin Struiksma, Brian Andersen, Tobbie Wells (CEO and president of Orchard Machinery Corporation), Tyler Niday (Founder and CEO of Bonsai Robotics) and Chase Morgan gather for a photo.

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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.