Due to the short time, high labor intensity and high workload of fruit and vegetable harvesting, robotic harvesting instead of manual operations is the future. The accuracy of object detection and location is directly related to the picking efficienc...
The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies has promoted the emergence of Agriculture 4.0, where the machines participating in agricultural activities are made smart with the capacities of self-sensing, self-decision-making, and sel...
In recent years, agricultural production activities have been advancing towards mechanization and intelligence to bridge the growing gap between the high labor intensity and time sensitivity of harvesting operations and the limited labor resources. A...
One of the challenges in the future of food production, amidst increasing population and decreasing resources, is developing a sustainable food production system. It is anticipated that robotics will play a significant role in maintaining the food pr...
23 October 2024
Automation in agriculture is revolutionizing the management of field tasks. This paper focuses on identifying the essential needs and preliminary technical requirements for designing an autonomous robot specifically for fruit harvesting. The study ex...
Using modern machines like robots comes with its set of challenges when encountered with unstructured scenarios like occlusion, shadows, poor illumination, and other environmental factors. Hence, it is essential to consider these factors while design...
In view of the continuous increase in labor costs for complex picking tasks, there is an urgent demand for intelligent harvesting robots in the global fresh fruit cultivation industry. Fruit visual information is essential to guide robotic harvesting...
Precise localization of occluded fruits is crucial and challenging for robotic harvesting in orchards. Occlusions from leaves, branches, and other fruits make the point cloud acquired from Red Green Blue Depth (RGBD) cameras incomplete. Moreover, an...
This paper proposes the development of an automatic fruit harvesting system by combining a low cost stereovision camera and a robotic arm placed in the gripper tool. The stereovision camera is used to estimate the size, distance and position of the...
This paper proposes a robotic system for fruit harvesting, which includes a mobile platform with a fruit basket, on which a parallel platform is installed, and in the center of the moving platform a telescopic link is installed for harvesting fruit f...
Intelligent agriculture imposes higher requirements on the recognition and localization of fruit and vegetable picking robots. Due to its unique visual information and relatively low hardware cost, machine vision is widely applied in the recognition...
Dragon fruit detection in natural environments remains challenged by limited accuracy and deployment difficulties, primarily due to variable lighting and occlusions from branches. To enhance detection accuracy and satisfy the deployment constraints o...
Robust and effective fruit detection and localization is essential for robotic harvesting systems. While extensive research efforts have been devoted to improving fruit detection, less emphasis has been placed on the fruit localization aspect, which...
In Asia, decreasing farmer and labor populations due to various factors is a serious problem that leads to increases in labor costs, higher harvesting input energy consumption and less resource utilization. To solve these problems, researchers are en...
The accuracy, speed, and robustness of object detection and recognition are directly related to the harvesting efficiency, quality, and speed of fruit and vegetable harvesting robots. In order to explore the development status of object detection and...
Berries are popular by consumers for improving vision, lowering blood sugar, improving circulation, and cardiovascular protection. They are usually small, thin-skinned, and fragile, with inconsistent ripening times. Harvesting robots are able to accu...
As the global fruit growing area continues to increase and the population aging problem continues to intensify, fruit and vegetable production is constrained by the difficulties of labor shortages and high costs. Single-arm harvesting robots are inef...
Experimental trials on the performance of end-effectors for the automated harvest of soft fruit are constrained by seasonal limitations on fruit availability and fruit perishability, necessitating the use of different sets of fruit across time. Conse...
A machine vision system for detecting apples in orchards was developed. The system was designed to be used in harvesting robots and is based on a YOLOv3 algorithm with special pre- and post-processing. The proposed pre- and post-processing techniques...
In the context of agricultural modernization and intelligentization, automated fruit recognition is of significance for improving harvest efficiency and reducing labor costs. The variety of fruits commonly planted in orchards and the fluctuations in...
For robotic harvesting of sweet-pepper fruits in greenhouses a sensor system is required to detect and localize the fruits on the plants. Due to the complex structure of the plant, most fruits are (partially) occluded when an image is taken from one...
Litchi is a highly favored fruit with high economic value. Mechanical automation of litchi picking is a key link for improving the quality and efficiency of litchi harvesting. Our research team has been conducting experiments to develop a visual-base...
This paper presents a novel approach to fruit detection using deep convolutional neural networks. The aim is to build an accurate, fast and reliable fruit detection system, which is a vital element of an autonomous agricultural robotic platform; it i...
The harvesting operation is a recurring task in the production of any crop, thus making it an excellent candidate for automation. In protected horticulture, one of the crops with high added value is tomatoes. However, its robotic harvesting is still...
Modern intelligent robotic systems offer farmers a promising solution to labor shortages caused by socio-economic instability and/or pandemics. Efficient harvesting of delicate fruits is one of the main needs in this area. In this context, this work...
Recently, computer vision methods have been widely applied to agricultural tasks, such as robotic harvesting. In particular, fruit harvesting robots often rely on object detection or segmentation to identify and localize target fruits. During the mod...
Robotic harvesting shows a promising aspect in future development of agricultural industry. However, there are many challenges which are still presented in the development of a fully functional robotic harvesting system. Vision is one of the most imp...
As global food demand rises and agricultural labor shortages intensify, robotic automation has become essential for sustainable fruit grasping. Among emerging technologies, ElectroAdhesion (EA) grippers offer a promising alternative to traditional me...
17 November 2023
Promotion of research and development in advanced technology must be implemented in agriculture to increase production in the current challenging environment where the demand for manual farming is decreasing due to the unavailability of skilled labor...
This paper proposes a fruit-harvesting robot system that improves harvesting efficiency by utilizing a Reachability Map (RM) and an Inverse Reachability Map (IRM). The proposed system accurately detects fruit locations using You Only Look Once versio...
This paper presents a detailed design of a skid-steering mobile platform with four wheels, along with a Cartesian serial (PPP) manipulator. The aim of this design is to enable the platform to perform various tasks in the agricultural process. The par...
Trunk recognition is a critical technology for Camellia oleifera fruit harvesting robots, as it enables accurate and efficient detection and localization of vibration or picking points in unstructured natural environments. Traditional trunk detection...
The motivation of this research was to explore the feasibility of detecting and locating fruits from different kinds of crops in natural scenarios. To this end, a unique, modular and easily adaptable multisensory system and a set of associated pre-pr...
For yield measurement of an apple orchard or the mechanical harvesting of apples, there needs to be accurate identification of the target apple fruit. However, in a natural scene, affected by the apple’s growth posture and camera position, ther...
Autonomous harvesting shows a promising prospect in the future development of the agriculture industry, while the vision system is one of the most challenging components in the autonomous harvesting technologies. This work proposes a multi-function n...
Aiming to solve the problem that most existing apple-picking robots operate with a single arm and that the overall efficiency of the machine needs to be further improved, a prototype of a dual-arm picking robot was built, and its picking operation pl...
Adaptability to unstructured objects and the avoidance of target damage are critical challenges for flexible grippers in fruit-picking robots. Most existing flexible grippers have many problems in terms of control complexity, stability and cost. This...
In this paper, a novel tool prototype for harvesting tabletop-grown strawberries is presented. Demonstrating resilience to localization inaccuracies of up to ±15 mm and achieving an average cycle time of 8.02 s at half its maximum operational...
Robotic harvesting has become an urgent need for the development of the apple industry, due to the sharp decline in agricultural labor. At present, harvesting apples using robots in unstructured orchard environments remains a significant challenge. T...
In the agricultural sector, utilizing robots for tasks such as fruit harvesting poses significant challenges, particularly in achieving accurate 6D pose estimation of the target objects, which is essential for precise and efficient harvesting. Partic...
The Robotics Vision Lab of Northwest Nazarene University has developed the Orchard Robot (OrBot), which was designed for harvesting fruits. OrBot is composed of a machine vision system to locate fruits on the tree, a robotic manipulator to approach t...
Due to the complex unstructured environmental factors in ridge-planting strawberry cultivation, automated harvesting remains a significant challenge. This paper presents an oriented-ridge double-arm cooperative harvesting robot designed for this cult...
Berries are nutritious and valuable, but their thin skin, soft flesh, and fragility make harvesting and picking challenging. Manual and traditional mechanical harvesting methods are commonly used, but they are costly in labor and can damage the fruit...
This paper addresses the formulation of an individual fruit harvest decision as a nonlinear programming problem to maximize profit, while considering selective harvesting based on fruit maturity. A model for the operational level decision was develop...
The application of citrus-picking robotic hands in orchard environments is constrained by the diversity in fruit size and shape, as well as the need to control fruit damage during harvesting. To address this issue, this study proposes a passively com...
Recent years have seen significant interest among agricultural researchers in using robotics and machine vision to enhance intelligent orchard harvesting efficiency. This study proposes an improved hybrid framework integrating YOLO VX deep learning,...
Robotic harvesting research has seen significant achievements in the past decade, with breakthroughs being made in machine vision, robot manipulation, autonomous navigation and mapping. However, the missing capability of obstacle handling during the...
Over the past decade, there have been increasing attempts to integrate robotic harvesting technology into agricultural scenarios to reduce growing labour costs and increase crop yields. In this paper, we demonstrate a prototype harvesting robot for p...
Kiwifruit harvesting with robotics can be troublesome due to the clustering feature. The gripper of the end effector will easily cause unstable fruit grasping, or the bending and separation action will interfere with the neighboring fruit because of...
Fruit- and vegetable-harvesting robots are a great addition to Agriculture 4.0 since they are gradually replacing human labor in challenging activities. In order to achieve the harvesting process accurately and efficiently, the picking robot’s...
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