‘Robots are inherently deflationary’: BC company revolutionizing the mushroom picking industry

A company in the BC Interior is using robotics and AI to pick mushrooms in an effort to tackle labour issues facing the industry.

Sean O’Connor with 4AG Robotics told KelownaNow they are a company with the goal of revolutionizing the mushroom picking industry.

The company’s website says labour shortages are crippling the industry due to the repetitive and intense labour that goes into working on a mushroom farm and tends to lead to high turnover rates.

O’Connor said the system built by 4AG Robotics is capable of running 24 hours a day, harvesting up to 80 lbs per hour all, pruning and thinning crops and weighing and packaging.

KelownaNow asked how exactly the robots work.

According to O’Connor, each robotic arm is built with a small camera on it, which is used to determine if a mushroom is ready to be picked or should be left for another day.

“That was really one of the big breakthroughs we made over the last year,” O’Connor said.

“There's a lot of work that we needed to do with the camera, with the lighting board, and with artificial intelligence to be able to separate each of those mushrooms to truly know which one.”

O’Connor said it was a “fascinating challenge” to determine how they could build the robots in a way that they could detect the quality of the mushroom and when to pick at the most optimal time before the mushrooms began damaging each other, resulting in food waste.

Other logistics include ensuring the packaged mushrooms are within plus or minus 1% of what grocery stores want and trimming the stems off, O’Connor told KelownaNow.

KelownaNow asked for more details on the company. O’Connor explained it as an artificial intelligence company embedded within a robotics company.

“We've got about 60 roboticist nerds hanging out in Salmon Arm who are building this company. We're growing really quickly. So probably adding another 10 to 15 this year,” O’Connor said.

That includes a mechanical team who designs how the customized and patented robot should be structured and a controls team that determines how it will move.

Besides building each robotic arm, the company also creates the software and AI that are used to recognize, pick, trim, weigh and package the mushrooms.

KelownaNow asked if there were any plans in the future to expand to other foods but O’Connor said that wasn’t in the plan right now.

“There's about $60 billion of mushrooms consumed annually. The majority of that are just regular white and brown mushrooms and that's what we specialize in,” he said.

KelownaNow wondered when farmers would begin to see the benefits of the investments in shelving and more efficient robots. O’Connor said the payback period is about two years.

“If they're capitalizing it over a longer period of time, they're getting about 30-40% savings in harvesting annually,” O’Connor said.

“In an inflationary environment, where everything seems to be getting more and more expensive, robots are inherently deflationary (...) we're able to reduce the environmental intensity of the farm, replace this huge labor issue they have and also make them more profitable.”

KelownaNow asked why the company chose to be based out of Salmon Arm.

O’Connor explained that the founder, Mike Boudreau, started the company there, which led to a “really good foundation”. He also added they were at an advantage because larger tech companies weren’t head hunting their staff.

KelownaNow wondered what O’Connor thought the future of robots was.

“I think we're going to see a proliferation of robots across (industries). I say that because there've been a few breakthroughs,” he said.

“One, is we can now reliably see what we're trying to see. Where you have the ability now to properly identify things in an environment, that's all very new. The second piece is, AI has now gotten to a place where we can allow robots to process a variety of information and then come up with the right path and what they should be doing.”

He added that it was encouraging to see companies unlocking opportunities for people in software, AI and robotics. To learn more about 4AG Robotics, feel free to visit this link.