Robotic System for the Harvesting of Vegetable Fruits

At IMAG-DLO a functional model of a mobile, harvesting robot has been designed and built for picking cucumbers and bunch of tomatoes in greenhouses. This paper presents the main line of research and the technological concept of the robot. The harvesting system consists of a vehicle for course positioning of the robot, a manipulator with an end-effector and a visionsystem for detection of fruits. Aspects like working time, number of robots required for standard nurseries and technology used to detect, classify and locate the fruit within its environment are also discussed.