Low-cost robotics for horticulture: a case study on automated sugar pea harvesting

Abstract

The horticultural sector is characterized by a large share of manual tasks. Flexible and low-cost robotic technologies hold promise for overcoming high labour costs. The present paper describes a case study on partially automated sugar pea harvesting. There is a growing market for fresh sugar peas in Norway, one that is filled either by imports, or production by help of imported labour. The contributions of the work, described in this paper, include an analysis of the needs and requirements, approaches to identify and track harvest-ready sugar peas under field conditions, and the design and testing of an early proof-of-concept robot platform. It was found that the pod has a signature distinct from the surrounding leaves in the water absorption bands, which is being explored for visual segmentation and tracking.