Summary
Smart Info-Media Systems in Asia
2019
Session Number:SS1
Session:
Number:SS1-1
System Development of Tomato Harvesting Robot Based on Modular Design
Takuya Fujinaga, Shinsuke Yasukawa, Kazuo Ishii,
pp.1-6
Publication Date:2019/9/4
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
In this study, we propose a system for designing tomato harvesting robot based on a modular design and describe examples of its implementation. In the agricultural industry, the aging and scarcity workers are becoming serious problems. Smart agriculture, aimed at reducing the need for manual harvesting and management by human workers, by introducing robotic technologies in plant factories, has been attracting much attention in recent years. However, plant factories very diverse in different location of plant factory and different business scales. It is therefore difficult to develop a single tomato harvesting robot optimized for all types of tomato plant factories. We explain hardware and software configurations that adopt modular design, for our proposed robots. Three kinds of tomato harvesting robots based on the proposed development concept are described. Harvesting experiments are then reported. The time to harvest one tomato from the cluster was 29 seconds with a 3-axis manipulator and 43 seconds with a 6-axis manipulator. We then discuss harvesting time and ways to shorten it. Based on the concept of modular design, even if hardware or sensors are changed, it is not necessary to change the entire system, and changing the module can customize the operation according to a specific purpose.