Geometric Performance Indices for Analysis and Synthesis of Manipulators for Robotic Harvesting

Abstract

The application of robotics in uncontrolled field environments is still in the developmental stages, unlike its counterparts in industrial automation. One agricultural task with high potential for the application of robotics is tree fruit harvesting. Manipulators with a serial (open-chain) configuration lend themselves to this application. The geometric configuration selection, which dictates the manipulator's workspace, dexterity, and geometric singularity-avoidance capability, takes precedence in the initial design of a harvesting robot. Other task performance demands, such as the manipulator's load capacity, speed, stiffness, and accuracy, can be optimized once a suitable configuration is selected. Although the geometric performance indices for serially configured robots are well discussed in the literature, there has been minimal work in effectively applying these performance criteria to the selection of a suitable configuration of an agricultural robot. In this article, the primary performance indices are identified and applied to the selection and analysis of tree fruit harvesting robot configurations.