Feedback Control of Manipulator Using Machine Vision for Robotic Apple Harvesting

Abstract

The challenges in developing a fruit harvesting robot are recognizing the fruit in the foliage,detaching the fruit from the tree, and the coordination of the vision system and the hand system. Thispaper presents the development of a feedback control of manipulator using machine vision. Tomeasure the distance of the fruit from the camera, the laser ranging sensor is used. The detectedfruit should be in the center of the image for its distance to be measured, so the camera should bepositioned using the manipulator to position the fruit in the center of the image. A feedback controlusing machine vision is used for this positioning procedure. Two controllers are considered; threepositionon-off controller and proportional controller with variable gain. Both controllers wereimplemented in a simulation. Simulation results showed that both controllers were able to guide themanipulator to position the fruit in the center of the image.