Design of a Robotic Pneumatic Pruner for Robotic Apple Harvesting

Abstract

The robotic systems firstly developed in industrial production domain. But, in countries, in which the number of agricultural workers is limited and the costs are high, there is a tendency towards robotic technology in agricultural production. For this reason, the robotic system implementations started to seem in many agricultural activities. In the present study, the robotic system was discussed in terms of harvesting that is one of the agricultural activities. The robotic harvesting system consists of image processor, robotic arm, and gripper, which performs the final action. In this study, the position of fruit was determined in real-time by using the image processing. The X- and Y-coordinates sent to robotic arm directed the movement of it. Z-axis, which is the third axis and provides the forwards movement, was controlled using distance sensor. The designed pneumatic pruner system was mounted at the tip of robotic arm. The experiments were carried out on 100 Golden apples at different locations on the branch. Based on the coordinates of fruit, 85% positioning accuracy and 73% success rate were obtained in cutting the fruit from branch. The cutting success was statistically analyzed. At the end of study, the position of fruit stem corresponding to the tip of pruner, the position of pruner corresponding to the body of fruit, the fruit, or the beginning of stem rather than the stem itself, and the position of pruner on the shoot of stem were observed to cause failure during cutting procedure. According to the results obtained from experiments, it was concluded that the system to be used in such systems is the pneumatic pruner system.