engineering

Harvest Automation

Harvest Automation is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Harvest Automation rather than just read about it. In short: Harvest Automation, Inc. is a robotics company headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, that manufactures small, mobile material handling robots for nursery, greenhouse and eCommerce fulfillment applications. History Harvest Automation Inc. was founded in 2009 by former iRobot employees on the premise that there are many examples of work in the world that are repetitive, strenuous and dangerous and that can benefi…

Key takeaways

Harvest Automation belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Harvest Automation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Harvest Automation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

History Harvest Automation Inc. was founded in 2009 by former iRobot employees on the premise that there are many examples of work in the world that are repetitive, strenuous and dangerous and that can benefit from robotic automation. Roomba inventors Joseph Jones and Paul Sandin, and Roomba engineer Clara Vu, founded the company along with CEO Charles Grinnell, who served as Lead Engineer of a $300 million particle detector at CERN – Europe's international physics research center. Since the formation of Harvest Automation, Inc., the company has received funding from various investors totaling at $30.6 million. The company competes with Kiva Systems, the manufacturer of warehouse robots that was acquired by Amazon in 2012.

Products & Markets

OmniVeyor HV-100

Harvest Automation’s first product is the OmniVeyor HV-100, providing automated material handling for the nursery and greenhouse market. OmniVeyor HV-100 units are designed for operation in both indoor and outdoor environments as typically seen on wholesale greenhouses, hoop houses and nurseries. The robots are intended to reduce production costs and increase overall productivity. OmniVeyor HV-100 robots automate the task of spacing containerized plants, common to wholesale Nursery and Greenhouse operations. When plants are young they are placed in close proximity to one another on fields in order to conserve resources such as land, water and pesticides. As the plants grow their containers must be spaced apart to allow the plants to develop a uniform and consistent canopy. The task of spacing plants has historically been completed with manual labor.

OmniVeyor TM-100

The OmniVeyor TM-100 robot is designed to automate material handling for the eCommerce market. OmniVeyor TM-100 robots are designed to work with and among existing workforces and infrastructure. The OmniVeyor TM-100 robots work by autonomously handling material movement and sortation and thereby eliminating the need for workers to walk long distances between picking products for order fulfillment. By virtue of its small size and weight and integrated obstacle detection and collision avoidance systems the robot is able to work in the same space as people. The OmniVeyor TM-100 robot is designed to allow for batch and single order processing as well as interleaved replenishment and returns processing.

References

External links

Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Harvest Automation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Harvest Automation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Harvest Automation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Harvest Automation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Harvest Automation

In research: Harvest Automation appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Harvest Automation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Harvest Automation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Agricultural robotics, Robotics companies of the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Harvest Automation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Harvest Automation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Harvest Automation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Harvest Automation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Harvest Automation in simple terms?

Harvest Automation, Inc. is a robotics company headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, that manufactures small, mobile material handling robots for nursery, greenhouse and eCommerce fulfillment applications. History Harvest Automation Inc. was founded in 2009 by former iRobot employees on the pr…

Why does Harvest Automation matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Harvest Automation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Harvest Automation.