(Photo/Zhejiang News)

A robot tea picking practice is underway in a tea garden of the Tea Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Sanjie town, Shengzhou city. Next to it stand experts from the Institute and professors from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, who are carefully observing and recording its every movement.

It is the third generation tea-picking robot being debugged by the Agricultural Robot Team of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. The robot can tell apart buds and leaves automatically and control its mechanical arm to pick accurately, with a 82% recognition accuracy, 2.5 seconds per leaf  average picking speed, and the 40% success rate.

Professor Chen Jianneng said that the success rate is not high enough yet for practical production, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. With more and more data samples, recognition accuracy will also be increasingly higher.

The tea-picking robot technology is currently being used in a pilot tea garden, which is expected to become one of the first smart tea gardens in China, and when this technology becomes mature enough in the future, it will be widely promoted in Shengzhou.

Editor: Li Qiaoqiao