Design of 6-DOF Tomato Picking Lifting Platform

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript introduces a tomato lifting platform with automatic lifting and automatic leveling functions. In summary, the research is interesting and provides valuable results, but the current document has several weaknesses that must be strengthened in order to obtain a documentary result that is equal to the value of the publication.

General considerations:

(1) At the thematic level, the proposal provides a very interesting vision, as the automation platform of fruit-picking would be a very useful resource for agriculture. Nevertheless, for picking operations, the design of the platform should be adapted to the end-effector. This issue is an important limitation about the aspirations of the proposal, whose limitations should be assumed with more rigour and realism in the development of the argumentation of the manuscript.

(2) The document contains a total of 31 employed references, of which 21 are publications produced in the last 5 years (68%), 5 in the last 5-10 years (16%), implying a total percentage of 84 % recent references. In this way, the total number is sufficient, and their actuality is high.

(3) Technique concerns: Why choose the 6-DOF lifting platform solution, for other state-of-art methods are there any technical innovations? If an end-effector is installed on the lifting platform, how to build the corresponding position conversion relationship? The final experiment uses angular error as an indicator of accuracy and lacks comparison with other similar studies to verify its superior stability.

Title, Abstract and Keywords:

(4) The abstract is complete and well-structured and explains the contents of the document very well. Nonetheless, the part relating to the results could provide numerical indicators obtained in the research.

Chapter 1: Introduction

(5) The first paragraph introducing the research topic may present a much broad and comprehensive view of the problems related to your topic with citations to authority references. 

(6) The novelty of the study is not apparent enough. In the introduction section, please highlight the contribution of your work by placing it in context with the work that has done previously in the same domain.

(7) On a general level, the study of the proposed detection techniques is reasonable, and the explanation of the objectives of the work may be valid. However, the limitations of your work are not rigorously assumed and justified.

Chapter 3: Simulation analysis of tomato picking lifting platform

(8) Whether the entire working space of the lifting platform has been simulated?

(9) For this design of lifting platform, what is the coordinate conversion relationship from the center point of the base to the center point of the pallet? This will help to realize the corresponding control after the subsequent installation of the robot arm.

Chapter 4: Conclusions

(10) Has the platform been subjected to stability experiments in actual orchards to verify the feasibility?

(11) It should mention the scope for further research as well as the implications/application of the study.

(12) I recommend including the limitations regarding the consideration of damage indicated in this review in the limitations assessment. This part of the document can be improved and completed with more rigour.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a 6-DOF tomato picking lifting platform with automatic lifting and leveling functions, which can increase the robot picking range speed. Simulation results and field experiments verify the rationality and effectiveness of the design.

I think this paper is acceptable with minor revision because of its innovation and practical value. Specific opinions are as follows:

(1) The formula format in Chapter 3.2 is not standardized, and the font size is inconsistent with the template.

(2) The formula lacks corresponding references, please complete it.

(3) The statement in line 122 is incorrect. The content in brackets is [reference], and no specific reference number is given. It is recommended to check and improve;

(4) The description of Figure 6, Figure 8 and Figure 9 in the paper is insufficient. It is suggested to supplement the description of differences and commonalities of each picture to facilitate better understanding;

(5) The details need to be further improved and corrected, such as the wrong use of upper and lower case letters, the loss of angle units, etc.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf