Hand-arm coordination for a tomato harvesting robot based on commercial manipulator

An executive system of tomato harvesting robot was constructed by integrating self-designed end-effector with commercial Motoman manipulator. To communicate the enclosed controller JRC of manipulator with PMAC controller of end-effector, statements in programs of both PComm32PRO and WINCAPS were used to set digital input/output by each other through two relays and certain condition judging statements in programs were monitor. Alternating and composite coordinative control modes were both realized with this method. Experiment results indicated that success rate of harvesting for alternating mode and composite mode were 70.0% and 83.3%, respectively. Average cycle time for alternative mode was 6.2 sec, compared with 6.0 sec for composite mode. Feasibility of hand-arm coordination based on commercial manipulator was proved, while highly integration of the control system need to be focused in further research.