Robot Manipulator for Citrus Harvesting: Configuration Selection

Abstract

The automation of highly dexterous agricultural tasks such as tree fruit harvesting requires research and development efforts in the areas of machine vision, robotic manipulator design, fruit handling and end effector design, and manipulator control. The subject of this paper is the robotic manipulator design for citrus fruit harvesting. Manipulators with a serial (open-chain) configuration lend themselves to this application. The kinematic configuration of the manipulator dictates the manipulators workspace and dexterity. A methodology is presented for the evaluation and selection of a robot manipulator configuration suitable for the citrus harvesting application. An optimal configuration for the citrus harvesting application is selected through comparison of multiple configurations using dexterity performance indices as the primary performance criteria. After the configuration selection, basic manipulator performance parameters such as, payload, speed, and accuracy can be determined from the task specifications.