How Lyro Robotics is Revolutionising Agribusiness Production Lines
Intelligent robots that pack fruit, vegetables and other natural products (and never take a break) are revolutionising production lines, says co-founder Dr Nicole Robinson.
Fact file
Co-founders: Dr Nicole Robinson (pictured), CEO, 35; Dr Jürgen “Juxi” Leitner, CTO, 40; Norton Kelly-Boxall, deployment and testing lead, 29
Investors: Artesian, Agfunder and others
First customer: Sunnyspot Packhouse, Queensland, 2020
Headquarters: Brisbane
Staff: 15
What’s your elevator pitch?
“We’re using intelligent pick-and-place robots and our proprietary software to transform the way natural products such as fruit and vegetables are packed for market. By optimising packing for agribusiness, our robots help to make the process more accurate and efficient, reducing food damage and waste in the supply chain. Lyro Robotics robots have been deployed across eastern Australia so far and worked with a variety of different crops, including avocados, zucchinis, sweet potatoes, capsicums and pineapples.”
What’s the problem that you’re aiming to solve?
“The agricultural sector is experiencing a 2 per cent to 5 per cent annual decline in labour availability worldwide, which contributes to rising costs and weakens supply-chain resilience. Sometimes there simply aren’t enough workers available to pack fruit and vegetables at the time that the produce is ready to be harvested. If perishable goods don’t make it into the food supply chain then all of the resources spent growing them are lost.”
How does it work?
“No two pieces of fruit or vegetables are the same. A robotic system needs to be able to pick up and pack each item as it arrives in front of the robot, which has to hold the produce as gently as possible – we have a variety of robot hands. When we’re calibrating the speed, we take into account how robust the item’s skin is because any damage to high-value crops can impact their market price. Using computer-vision techniques, our robots can accurately identify, select, pick and pack items of different shapes, sizes and textures and place them in trays and boxes according to specific packing patterns. The robots can pick up to 1250 single objects in an hour and customers can see up to a 500 per cent increase in packing-shed throughput in a day.”
How did you get it off the ground?
“We three founders were at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision in Brisbane and shared a passion for applying robotics to create positive change. We circled around the idea of applying this technology to the Australian agrifood market, in which packing had been largely untouched by automation. Early conversations with enthusiastic agribusinesses confirmed the demand and we got to work. The industrial robot arm is from a third-party provider and programmed with our software and we custom-build the safety enclosure around it. We offer Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) leasing and can install a robot onsite within hours, ready to pack for hours, weeks and months on end.”
What’s next?
“We deployed our latest model, which features higher precision, speed and pack quality of each tray, for this year’s winter harvest. We’re putting our intelligent robots to work with a growing list of clients to show how they can deal with a variety of products in commercial packing lines. The system has a vast capacity for expansion in the agricultural and food processing industries. Our vision is to become the global leader in robotic packing solutions for natural products. Before the end of this year, we hope to have launched our first robots overseas.”
