Improving The Performance of OrBot The Fruit Picking Robot

Abstract

Automated robotic fruit harvesting has become an exciting new topic in the last decade, with multiple new developments in the subject every year. With the lack of agricultural workers, robotic harvesting has become even more relevant. However, none of the robotic systems that have been created can compare with the speed of a human worker, and for a robotic system to become economically viable, it must be able to compete with them. OrBot, the Orchard Picking Robot created by the Robotics Vision Lab, has been successful at harvesting at 15s per apple. For this to be commercially viable, the harvesting speed should be around 10s. Using MATLAB optimization techniques, the harvesting time was reduced to 9.5s.