DocumentCode :
2307197
Title :
Next generation image guided citrus fruit picker
Author :
Aloisio, Christopher ; Mishra, Ranjan Kumar ; Chang, Chu-Yin ; English, James
Author_Institution :
Energid Technol. Corp., Cambridge, MA, USA
fYear :
2012
fDate :
23-24 April 2012
Firstpage :
37
Lastpage :
41
Abstract :
Supply and availability of labor for fruit harvesting is a problem worldwide, and attempts to mechanize the fruit harvesting process have been carried out for decades. During the last century, fruit harvesters have tried mechanical methods such as trunk shaking, canopy shaking, raking, and mass mechanical penetration. Though they are economical alternative options for harvesting nuts, olives, cherries, and prunes, these brute-force mechanical methods have had limited results for citrus fruit. Robotics has also been tried. Technical challenges in robotics include recognizing and locating the fruit and detaching it according to prescribed criteria without damaging either the fruit or the tree. The key practical problem, though, is economic. A robotic system needs to be economically sound to warrant its use as an alternative to hand picking. Cambridge, Massachusetts, based Energid Technologies Corporation is developing a practical robotic fruit picking system whose concept is driven by the economics of mass harvesting while leveraging machine vision and robotic guidance and control. The system uses flexible tubes with removal tools at one end that can be individually fired pneumatically and steered robotically, with sensor input coming from a grid of machine vision cameras.
Keywords :
agricultural products; agriculture; image sensors; mobile robots; object recognition; path planning; robot vision; Cambridge; Energid Technologies Corporation; Massachusetts; brute-force mechanical methods; canopy shaking; fruit harvesting process; fruit location; fruit recognition; machine vision cameras; mass harvesting economics; mass mechanical penetration; mechanical methods; next generation image guided citrus fruit picker; raking; robotic control; robotic fruit picking system; robotic guidance; trunk shaking; Calibration; Cameras; Image segmentation; Robot sensing systems; Tongue; Vectors; citrus harvesting; machine vision; robotic fruit picking;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Woburn, MA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0855-7
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/TePRA.2012.6215651
Filename :
6215651
Link To Document :
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