Design and implementation of an aided fruit‐harvesting robot (Agribot)

Abstract

This work presents a robot prototype designed and built for a new aided fruit‐harvesting strategy in highly unstructured environments, involving human‐machine task distribution. The operator drives the robotic harvester and performs the detection of fruits by means of a laser range‐finder, the computer performs the precise location of the fruits, computes adequate picking sequences and controls the motion of all the mechanical components (picking arm and gripper‐cutter). Throughout this work, the specific design of every module of the robotized fruit harvester is presented. The harvester has been built and laboratory tests with artificial trees were conducted to check range‐finder’s localization accuracy and dependence on external conditions, harvesting arm’s velocity, positioning accuracy and repeatability; and gripper‐cutter performance. Results show excellent range‐finder and harvesting arm operation, while a bottleneck is detected in gripper‐cutter performance. Some figures showing overall performance are given.

Robotic manipulation of food products – a review

“…On a much larger scale Ceres et al (1998) designed and implemented a human aided fruit-harvesting robot (Agribot). The Agribot approaches the problem of fruit picking by combining human and machine operations.…”

A review of key techniques of vision-based control for harvesting robot

“…This approach for robotic harvesting is to separate the fruit recognition stage from the harvest stage by marking the target fruit a priori. In the Agribot project, a robot was designed and built for a new aided-harvesting strategy, involving a harmonic human-machine task distribution (Ceres et al, 1998). Ji et al (2014 introduced an assistant-mark approach to recognize and locate the picking-point of the harvesting robot.…”

Nonlinear Robust Visual Servo Control for Robotic Citrus Harvesting

“…In addition, the robotic system needs to be economically sound to warrant its use as an alternative method to hand picking. Ceres et al (1998) developed an aided fruit harvesting strategy, where an operator performed detection of fruits by means of a laser rangefinder (LRF). The identified position of fruit in spherical coordinates was used to control the three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) manipulator for harvesting.…”