Current Developments in Automated Citrus Harvesting

Abstract

The area of intelligent automated citrus harvesting has become a renewed area of researchin recent years. The renewed interest is a result of increased economic demand for better solutionsfor selective automated citrus harvesting than are currently available by purely mechanicalharvesters. Throughout this paper the main challenges facing intelligent automated citrus harvestingare addressed: fruit detection and robotic harvesting. The area of fruit detection is discussed, andincorporates the important properties of citrus that can be used for detection. Robotic harvesting iscovered, and involves the discussion of the main mechanical design needs as well as the use ofvisual servoing for the control of the robotic harvester. A description of our proposed intelligent citrusharvesting system as well as our current prototype is presented.