In Dutch greenhouses, tomato pickers are gaining robotic colleagues. At Westburg in Grubbenvorst, Limburg, Four Growers machines harvest ripe snacking tomatoes. They look between the leaves, choose a fruit and move a gripper towards it. The robots can keep going after the employees’ working day ends.
That is what makes the technology interesting: this is not just a robot repeating a programmed circuit around identical parts. Every cluster hangs differently. Green tomatoes sit among red ones, leaves block the view, and the fruit must not be damaged during picking.
An industrial arm among the plants
Four Growers builds the GR-200 around a compact FANUC robotic arm. Camera images and AI help the system recognise ripe tomatoes; motion planning determines how the arm reaches them. According to FANUC’s Westburg case study, the software can be adapted to the grower’s ripeness standards and crops.
A grower does not simply want everything that looks red removed from the plant. The right harvesting moment depends on the product they want to deliver. For a robot, picking therefore involves several decisions: which fruit is suitable, where is it, and how can it be reached?
From one robot to a fleet
Westburg uses several machines in the same greenhouse. Four Growers reported five GR-200 harvesting robots at the Dutch grower. The challenge shifts from one successful picking movement to organising a harvest with an entire team of machines.
According to FANUC, the robots were harvesting within a week of installation. Westburg uses them by day and at night to handle the harvest with fewer people. The company says in the case study that this gives employees more time for other crop work.
The greenhouse still needs people
A harvesting robot does not make a greenhouse fully automatic overnight. Looking after plants, maintaining quality and organising the work remain part of growing. The gain lies in taking over a task that returns every day, fruit after fruit.
That is an appealing step for Dutch greenhouse horticulture. Greenhouses already control a great deal of the light, water and climate. Now the robot is learning to remove the product itself carefully from the plant. Your snacking tomato could have a very different picker.
