An automated fruit harvesting robot by using deep learning

摘要

Recently automation and labor saving in agriculture have been required. However, mechanization and robots for growing fruits have not been advanced. In this paper, a method of detecting fruits and automated harvesting by a robot arm is proposed. To detect the position of fruits, a highly fast and accurate method with Single Shot Multibox Detector is used. To detect the three-dimensional position, a stereo camera is used. After calculating the angles of the joints at the detected position by inverse kinematics, the robot arm is moved to the position of the target fruit. The robot harvests it by twisting the axis of the hand. From the experimental results, more than 90% of fruits were detected. Also the robot could harvest a fruit in 16 seconds.