“Bob is changing the future of agriculture,” said Gary Wishnatzki, CEO of Wish Farms, speaking of UF Mechanical Engineering alumnus Robert Pitzer. Back in 2013, they two men partnered to address the challenge of dwindling farm labor available to pick Wishnatzki’s 600 acres of strawberries, located in Plant City just east of Tampa, Florida.
Together, they co-founded Harvest CROO Robotics to develop an autonomous strawberry-picking machine. The latest iteration is called Berry 5 (B5), an AI-driven harvester that was developed to select and pick the ripened strawberries as fast as human laborers and yet not bruise or damage the crop. Today, with Bob’s technological ingenuity, they are already reaching their goal of putting B5 to work commercially as early as December 2019.
Bob Pitzer and Gary Wishnatzki with Berry 3 Prototype
Wishnatzki said of his co-founder and the company’s Chief Technology Officer, “Bob has the ability to look at an engineering problem and see solutions that others cannot. There are a number of novel approaches he has invented for the Harvest CROO strawberry harvester. His creativeness has allowed us to be in a lead position in solving this huge challenge.”
Wishnatzki added, “His imagination is only second to his ability to collaborate with diverse groups of people, including suppliers, academics, friends, and others he connects with. It takes a village to raise a child and I believe the same can be said of building a strawberry- picking robot.”
Robert Pitzer (BSME ’97) studied mechanical engineering, mechatronics, robotics and automation engineering as a student at the University of Florida. As a UF student, he co-founded the UF Machine Intelligence Lab’s award-winning Subjugator Team and worked directly with STEM educators, including Segway inventor and serial entrepreneur Dean Kamen and the USFIRST organization, to produce large-scale robot STEM competitions. He also worked at Intel to help automate the semiconductor industry.
Pitzer has since used his knowledge and expertise to assist startups and established companies with resources to develop new and unique technology products. ”UF helped me ‘get in the door’ at large-scale organizations doing important projects where I have had the opportunity to make a difference,” he said.
Pitzer and fellow Gator alum Scott Jantz- (BS ’95, MS ’98 ECE), the lead electrical engineer on the Harvest CROO project, are bringing their Gator Engineering expertise to the table to solve the labor availability problem that is beginning to desperately affect the specialty produce sector. They are looking for like-minded innovative engineers to help them reach their goal – to continue bringing strawberries to our tables abundantly and at an affordable price.
Read more about Harvest CROO’s success to date, as well as future plans for B5.