On July 4th, the Lvfengyuan Planting Farm in Dali County, Weinan, Shaanxi, introduced an AI winter jujube harvesting robot, developed by Shenzhen Lanxia Robotics and Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen. The robot picks fruit every 8 seconds, achieving an 85% capture rate and under 8% damage.

Its robotic arm uses a vision system to identify ripe fruit and employs flexible fingertip technology for accurate harvesting.Dali County is hailed as China's top county for winter jujube production. Its cultivation area spans 420,000 mu (approx. 28,000 hectares), with an annual output exceeding 700,000 tons. The entire industry chain's value has surpassed 10 billion yuan. The Dali winter jujube brand ranks third in China in melon and fruit reputation. It is not only popular in many large and medium-sized cities across China but also exported to Central Asia, Europe, and America.

The winter jujube harvesting season runs from June to September, requiring significant labor. "Agricultural modernization relies on technological advancement," said Ma Hongli, a Deputy to the National People's Congress and Secretary of the general Party branch of Changjia Village, Dali County. In November, she consulted Wang Boran, Associate Research Fellow of the International Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Harbin Institute of Technology, to develop a robot for harvesting winter jujubes.

"Following field research targeting the unique challenges of winter jujube harvesting, we leveraged prior technical expertise for an intensive three-month development push," Wang Boran explained. "This resulted in the first-generation prototype achieving breakthroughs in lightweight mechanical design, multimodal precision sensing, and fruit maturity assessment."

Wang Boran introduced that the second-generation "Lanxia" AI harvesting robot prototype is already under development. It will primarily address the issue of reduced recognition and capture efficiency under high temperatures and is expected to be unveiled within three months. The design and development of the third-generation "Lanxia" AI harvesting robot have also been scheduled, paving the way for large-scale deployment.