A vision system based on a laser range-finder applied to robotic fruit harvesting

This paper describes a laser-based computer vision system used for automati c fruit recognition. It is based on an infrared laser range-finder sensor t hat provides range and reflectance images and is designed to detect spheric al objects in non-structured environments. Image analysis algorithms integr ate both range and reflectance information to generate four characteristic primitives which give evidence of the existence of spherical objects. The o utput of this vision system includes 3D position, radius and surface reflec tivity of each spherical object. It has been applied to the AGRI-BOT orange harvesting robot, where it has obtained good fruit detection rates and unl ikely false detections.