AI Tech / news
Robots Join the Longjing Tea Harvest in Hangzhou
China’s tea industry is testing AI-powered robots in Hangzhou’s West Lake Longjing harvest, with machines designed to pick delicate leaves and take on tasks once handled by skilled workers.
The trial is focused on Hangzhou’s Longjing harvest, where machines developed by Zhejiang Sci-Tech University began working alongside human pickers early last year.
The robots use AI to read image data and identify buds and leaves at the right stage, aiming to reproduce some of the judgment that makes premium tea picking difficult to automate. Longjing leaves do not mature evenly, and pickers must remove tender buds without bruising or damaging them.
The university’s agricultural machinery institute says the latest version can handle a workload equivalent to about 1.5 human workers. The effort is part of a broader push in China’s tea industry to apply robots to tasks long dependent on human skill.
Beyond picking, researchers and companies in Hangzhou are working on machines for transporting and serving tea, as well as recreating centuries-old preparation methods. The projects show how modern technology is being applied to an industry rooted in tradition.
The work also raises a cultural question: how much of a practice built on hand skills and sensory judgment can a machine reproduce? The projects offer a glimpse of that debate in one of China’s best-known tea regions.