Cutting Point Detection Using a Robot with Point Clouds for Tomato Harvesting

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to detect cutting points on tomato peduncles using a harvesting robot. The main objective of this study was to develop automated harvesting robots. The harvesting robot was equipped with an RGB-D (Red, Blue, Green, and Depth) camera to detect peduncles and an end effector to harvest tomatoes. Robots must be able to detect where to cut crops during harvesting. The proposed method was used to detect the cutting points on peduncles using a point cloud captured by the RGB-D camera. Our robot was used to identify the cutting points on target tomato peduncles at an actual farm to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach experimentally. Using the proposed method, the harvesting robot could detect the cutting points on tomatoes.