Indoor agriculture automation with Orlar: design and control of an automation mechanism to collect nursery pots of vegetables at the vegetative stage

Indoor agriculture provides a controlled environment for growing vegetables while making good use of space, water, and other resources. As production increases, however, handling large numbers of plants can create a heavy workload for workers. One of these tasks is collecting nursery pots after the growing stage, where each pot needs to be found, removed, and moved to a collection area. Repeating this process for thousands of plants can be time-consuming, tiring, and difficult to carry out consistently.

Indoor Agriculture Automation with Orlar addresses this challenge by developing a robotic system to automate the nursery pot collection process. The system brings together computer vision, a 3-axis movement system, and a specially designed gripper to complete the task. A camera first identifies the position of each pot, allowing the robot to move to the correct location. The gripper then securely holds the pot and performs a controlled twisting motion to help separate the roots before lifting it from the growing area. Once the pot is removed, the robot carries it to a collection area and prepares to collect the next one.



The system is designed to handle small differences in pot position and targets a collection rate of approximately 30 pots per minute. By automating this repetitive task, the project aims to reduce manual work, save time, improve consistency, and support the use of robotics in indoor agriculture.