SBIR-STTR Award

Peach thinning is a major expense for peach farming operations accounting for 60% of the total cost during annual maintenance. The commonly used bloom thinning methods include hand chemical and mechanical thinning. Hand thinning and mechanical thinning are the most widely used but these methods are labor intensive inaccurate and have no built-in intelligence to properly guide the thinning process. Advent Innovations in collaboration with the University of South Carolina and Titan Farms in Ridge Spring SC proposes to develop a Smart Vision and AI-driven Peach Thinning Software (A- EYE) for accurate and efficient thinning of peach blossoms. By implementing artificial intelligence the A-EYE software will be capable of real time decision making for faster and more accurate thinning which is essential during the short thinning period available. Vision processing tools and advanced machine learning techniques will be used to actively identify productive blooms by determining the bloom density and color distribution leading to significant time and cost savings and increased fruit size and profitability of an orchard. Unlike other purely data-driven A methodologies the proposed A-EYE software will uniquely utilize organic information such as human knowledgebase and experiences along with the thinning requirements practiced by peach farms. The software will be designed to utilize a digital database Advent Digi-Farm that Advent is already developing for Titan Farms. This AI-driven visual processing unit will be integrated with a portable device (tablet laptop etc.) to guide the thinning process in real time.