The Agri-OpenCore consortium came together on Monday 19 October 2026 for the project’s close-out meeting, which ended with a demonstration of robotic harvesting of tomatoes on the vine at APS Produce’s Europa Nurseries in Kent.
Funded by Innovate UK as part of the Defra Farming Innovation Programme, Agri-OpenCore ran from April 2023 to September 2026. It brought together APS Group, the University of Lincoln, Dogtooth Technologies and Extend Robotics to build an open development platform for agri-robotic crop harvesting, cutting the time and cost of developing robotic harvesting systems for new farms and crops.
From strawberries to tomatoes
The project worked on two harvesting use cases: strawberries, with the Dogtooth Technologies harvesting robot and the University of Lincoln autonomy stack, and high-wire tomatoes, with APS Group and Dogtooth Technologies.
Alongside the robots, the consortium released open ROS 2 software components, built digital twins of strawberry, tomato and packhouse settings, and worked on standards and safety for robots on farms, including the BSI BS 8646 framework.
Phil Pearson of APS Group, who led the project, thanked the consortium:
“What we have all achieved is remarkable. We now have commercial robots harvesting strawberries, in commercially significant numbers. And we saw how this has been translated into the harvesting of tomatoes on the vine. This has been a significant project for UK horticulture, and harvesting robotics, and opens the door to export revenue, as well as delivering food security for the UK.”
Phil Pearson, APS Group, Agri-OpenCore project lead
What comes next
The partners are already building on the project. As Phil put it, “We have a great deal more to achieve, as we strive towards commercialisation of harvesting robotics for tomatoes, and the advanced automation opportunities in packhouses.” The open software stack continues to be used and developed, including by the new HARVEST Robot Adoption Hub and the University of Lincoln spinout JABAS.AI.
Thank you to everyone across the consortium for their work on Agri-OpenCore. Find out what was delivered on the Outcomes page, and explore the Software and Resources.