FRESNO, Calif. and RAMOT MENASHE, Israel — Isaac Mazor, founder and CEO of Nanovel Ltd., revealed an autonomous tree fruit harvester Oct. 17. 

Nanovel's autonomous tree fruit harvester combines AI, computer vision, machine learning and proprietary robotics technologies to enable autonomous tree fruit harvesting to become more productive, reliable and cost effective than hand harvesting. The robot can grip and trim a variety of fruit types, including citrus, stone fruit, avocado and mango. It also provides reliable harvest scheduling and insights about yield and fruit quality from its data collection and analysis. Nanovel says the harvester is cost-competitive compared to traditional manual picking.

The company expects to launch its beta version in 2023 for the citrus market. Nanovel has been self-funded and operating in stealth mode since established in 2018. It has been intensively researching and developing its technologies, proving the concept, securing its intellectual property, and conducting field testing and customer demonstrations of its robotic harvester. 

"Nanovel is committed to address a serious threat to the future supply of tree fruit. Enhancing grove profitability is a driving motivator behind building our new AI-driven robotic harvester," says Mazor. "Nanovel’s robot is extremely intelligent, ag-environment durable and cost-effective. Grower input throughout the development process sharpens the Nanovel team's focus on solving real world problems using our proprietary technology. Our mission is to provide growers a reliable, productive and affordable solution for tree fruit harvesting."

Mazor is a serial entrepreneur in the field of semiconductors and leveraged his experience to solve this complex technological challenge in agriculture.

“Farm labor shortage is one of the main challenges we are facing today," says Tal Fogelman, a California grower and Business Development Advisor to Nanovel. “Especially around harvest time, farm labor is scarce, challenging to secure. Nanovel’s solution will be serving a multi-billion dollar market that is currently relying on the traditional method of manual picking.”

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