Design and Testing of an End-Effector for Tomato Picking

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

The present work tries to improve the techniques of automatic picking of tomato, in order to improve automatic tomato harvest. This aspect is very important especially in geographical areas where the tomato cultivation are going to assume more interest.

The work is original in that the authors study, design, manufacture and evaluate a “special” picking end-effectors from a "direct agricultural" point of view.

The work is written in good scientific language and presents an accurate bibliographic analysis. It is easy to read even for the uninitiated.

The images are of a good standard and are presented very clearly.

The development of the work is complete and consistent with the objectives initially described.

I have some remarks:

Line 155-156: four decimal digits are necessary for describe humans finger? My opinion is to reduce decimal digits in order to avoid disturb the reader in question not really important for the aim of the paper

Line 176: maybe is missed some words.

Line 472: please check the North position: is it 34°?

Please add a blank line after the figures caption, it increase the readability.

All over the paper there are some mistakes in punctuation/spaces.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript is of scientific and practical interest. It presents the results and methodology for the design of a drive end mover for a tomato picking robot. The article is clearly presented with enough data to understand the problem to be solved and the possible reproduction of the research results. Sufficiently complete review of scientific works on this topic is carried out. There is a sufficient amount of digital information in the work, which allows to estimate it as a complete scientific work.

However, the work lacks comparative substantiation of the number of finger parts and the number of fingers themselves. Perhaps only two will be enough to solve the problem of tomato harvesting. Also, when analyzing the properties of tomatoes, their varietal specificity was not taken into account; depending on the variety, they have different shell thickness and degree of maturity, which will significantly affect the traumability and permissible interaction forces of the fingers of the manipulator with them. Studies on holding tomatoes are given in the paper, but during picking, additional forces occur during picking, which can significantly exceed the holding forces. Figures 4 and 5 show patterns of interaction between finger parts and the tomato, from which it can be seen that all fingers interact with the fruit, but the experimental data presented in Figure 24 shows that this is not the case. Line 473 indicates that three hundred tomatoes were taken for experiments, the data of which are given in Table 4, but Table 4 shows the characteristics of only three.

Figures given in the article are easy to read and have sufficient completeness of information.

The conclusions reflect the results of the research, arising from them and justified in the course of the work, which is a significant advantage of this work.

This work has a theoretical and practical nature in the future can be used by other scientists as a basis and supplemented by the results of laboratory research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article:

Design and Testing of an End-effector for Tomato Picking

was reviewed achieving the following conclusions:

Review

Rewrite the abstract

In line 5 the abstract should start with a pair of lines of why the end effector is important in China considering working shortage. Then which type of end defector was chosen. All the design comments go to the methodology, so please let only better results and considerations.

Line 176 is not clear. FIX the load is given as…

Can you explain what you mean with: These results show that only locally in line 192.

Figure 10 is the motor curve but the heading of Figure 9 is not correct. It shows the implementation of the system.

Change formula by equation in line 278.

Line 339 Is it section 3.1 or section 2.1?

Line 352 that explains three figures is not clear and should be rewritten.

In the author contribution only the first letters of the authors should be written as Fang Gu should be F.G.

References

In all the references eliminate [J] before the journal. If it is a journal the year has to be bolded. The names have only the first initiall with a point following and a semicolon then. For example reference 4:

Su Long, Liu Ruijia, Liu kenan, Li Kai, Liu Li, Shi Yinggang. Greenhouse Tomato Picking Robot Chassis. Agriculture. 2023, 13, 565 532.

Long, S.; Ruijia, L.; Kenan, L.; Kai, L.; Li, L.; Yinggang, S. Greenhouse Tomato Picking Robot Chassis. Agriculture 2023, 13, 565-532.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx