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Automation and labor saving in agriculture have been required recently. However, mechanization and robots for growing fruits have not been advanced. This study proposes a method of detecting fruits and automated harvesting using a robot arm. A highly fast and accurate method with a Single Shot MultiBox Detector is used herein to detect the position of fruit, and a stereo camera is used to detect the three-dimensional position. After calculating the angles of the joints at the detected position by inverse kinematics, the robot arm is moved to the target fruit's position. The robot then harvests the fruit by twisting the hand axis. The experimental results showed that more than 90% of the fruits were detected. Moreover, the robot could harvest a fruit in 16 s.

Silica gel treated with thionyl chloride was found to be an effective as well as highly selective catalyst for thioacetalization of aldehydes. With the use of this catalyst 1,3-dithioranes and 1,3-dithianes were obtained in excellent yields from various aldehydes. Under the same conditions ketones were similarly but more slowly thioketalized. This difference in reactivity between aldehydes and ketones was successfully utilized for the thioacetalization of aldehydes in the presence of ketones and also for the chemoselective conversion of keto aldehydes into the corresponding dithioacetals with the keto group remaining intact.

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