Originally written by Partner Content on Small Business
One of the pain points with Brexit was always going to be the shortage of migrant EU workers coming to Britain for the summer fruit picking season. The government is trialling a scheme that would only allow a maximum of 30,000 migrant EU workers into Britain this summer to pick soft fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that 70,000 fruit and veg pickers are needed in Britain each season.
Henry Acevedo, a computer scientist from Colombia, has developed a robot transport system which is about to start trials at a fruit farm. Given that nearly a quarter of any fruit picker’s time is spent carrying produce to collection points, Acevedo and his Fox Robotics team believe they can boost productivity by letting pickers concentrate on just picking fruit.
Being a winner at this year’s Start-Up Series will help turn his childhood passion for robotics into a business that can help farmers avoid fruit and vegetables rotting unpicked in the fields.
What’s your background as a tech entrepreneur?
I’m a Colombian computer scientist with almost 30 years’ experience in industry across many areas, such as telecommunications, working systems engineering, software development, information security, automation and, of