Dogtooth Technologies Limited

Dogtooth has developed five generations of its strawberry picking robot and uses 60 third- and fourth-generation robots for commercial picking in the UK and overseas. This year, we will pick 50 tonnes of fruit by robot (including e.g. 5% of Dyson Farming's strawberry output), and we expect to pick 200 tonnes in 2024\. Dogtooth is, today, already within an...

Following on from Project Idaeus, which delivered a proof of concept raspberry harvesting robot, this project Tenaci will pick up the development of two major threads of work: End-effector development and adaption of the crop to facilitate robotic harvest. Dogtooth has picked over 1.2M strawberries in the YTD 2023 using the end-effector developed through ...

The **FLEXBOT** project aims to improve labour productivity in English soft fruit farming operations by integrating collaborative logistics robots (cobots) into the farms. Lead partner **Fox Robotics** will develop and showcase three primary outcomes: demonstrating the feasibility of supply chain interoperability between suppliers, exploring a sustainable...

Horticulture is suffering a labour productivity crisis. A rise in farm gate prices for strawberries since 2010 of just 23% \[_Defra_\] versus minimum wage increases of 77% in the same period \[_HomeOffice_\] have squeezed growers' margins to the absolute limit. Meanwhile a lack of labour availability, with 44% of growers employing seasonal labourers repor...

It is well accepted that due to Brexit, COVID, Ukraine and population demographics, the UK horticulture sector is heavily constrained by a lack of seasonal harvest labour. This year as crops have gone unpicked, NFU President Minette Batters stated that the sector was in an "absolute" food waste "crisis". DEFRA is working with industry to mitigate impacts....

Dogtooth Technologies is helping to make farming more sustainable through intelligent robotics. Project Demeter will increase the number of berries a battery powered (charged from renewable sources) picking machine will harvest in its lifetime. Not only will the project reduce the operational carbon emissions to close to zero, it will spread its embodied ...

World Resources Institute figures suggest that a third of all food produced is wasted, explaining 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions and $940B economic losses per year. This project will focus on waste reduction in strawberry production (average waste 9%, about $1B globally) but the approaches developed will be applicable to other fruit crops too. Pick...

Raspberries are fragile fruits that require significant manual labour to harvest. The raspberry industry has seen significant growth in production due to consumer demand, but the cost and availability of labour is threatening its economic viability. This project will produce a proof of concept raspberry picking robot that will demonstrate the approach req...

Strawberry harvesting is a labour intensive task that depends critically on the availability of a large amount of low-cost labour. Growers are increasingly vulnerable to labour market price fluctuations and burdened by high employment overheads. Building on Dogtooth's proof of concept strawberry picking robot (developed during Innovate UK project Ananassa...

The result of this project demonstrates the core technologies to autonomously harvest strawberries. At present the harvest of strawberries is performed by manual labour, as the task requires gentle handling of the fruit, selective harvest without damage to other strawberries or plants and a prolonged harvest season. However due to the nature and seasonali...