WIM Co-Develops a Smart-Farm Cucumber Robot (Jul 2026)

WIM has developed a smart-farm robot, together with Gyeongsangbuk-do Agricultural Research & Extension Services, that automates cucumber cultivation work in greenhouses. Through joint research the two partners have effectively completed development and are now validating the robot in a working greenhouse. The robot and its recognition technology were recently shown to visitors at a cultivation site.

Moving on its own between narrow cultivation beds, the robot uses a camera to recognize a plant's main stem and leaves, then moves the arm along a path that avoids surrounding leaves to prune targeted ones. Greenhouses are among the harder environments to automate. Stems, leaves, fruit, and background are all shades of green, which makes targets difficult to distinguish, and each plant differs in position and shape, so real-time perception and precise motion control must work together.

WIM applied its own control technology, which integrates vision recognition with real-time motion control. Unlike a structured factory line, the aim is to let the robot work reliably in an unstructured real-world setting where position and shape are not fixed.

Greenhouse cucumber farming is labor-intensive, with much repetitive, precise handwork such as leaf management. This joint development automates that work and shows that WIM's control technology can extend beyond manufacturing into agriculture. Starting from robot manipulators, WIM aims to build a general-purpose robot control stack that reaches mobile robots and other environments.