DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AIDED FRUIT-HARVESTING ROBOT (AGRIBOT)

This work presents a robot prototype designed and built for a new aide d fruit-harvesting strategy in highly unstructured environments, invol ving human-machine task distribution. The operator drives the robotic harvester and performs the detection of fruits by means of a laser ran gefinder, the computer performs the precise location of the fruits, co mputes adequate picking sequences and controls the motion of all the m echanical components (picking arm and gripper-curler). Throughout this work, the specific design of every module of the robotized fruit harv ester is presented. The harvester has been built and laboratory tests with artificial trees were conducted to check rangefinder's localizati on accuracy and dependence on external conditions, harvesting arm's ve locity, positioning accuracy and repeatibility; and gripper-cutter per formance. Results show excellent range-finder and harvesting arm opera tion while a bottleneck is detected in gripper-cutter performance. Som e figures showing overall performance are given.