Design and fabrication of a 4 Degree of Freedom (DOF) robot arm for coconut harvesting

Abstract

Production of coconut plays an essential part in the economy of India. The coconuts are produced traditionally in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and other regions of Indian territories. The marginal increase in the yield and production rate of coconut gives an opportunity to apply robotics in the coconut harvesting process to do the harvesting trouble free. The development of robotic harvester can overcome the difficulties such as lack of climbing labours and the operational, safety problems in availing manual climbers. The coconut growers and farmers are facing practical difficulties in coconut harvesting because of the height of the tree. Hence development of an automated coconut harvesting machine is required for harvesting of coconut to avoid manual climbing, death and severe injuries on climbers. Based on this idea, a four Degree Of Freedom (DOF) robot arm is designed using Inverse Kinematics calculations and from that design a model is fabricated to do trial operations.