Development of Vison System and Robot Hand for Tomato Harvesting

Abstract

This paper described the development of a robot hand and a vision system for tomatoes harvesting. It is difficult to harvesting without damaging them, because tomato makes clusters bearing 3-4 tomatoes in general. In this research, our proposed robot hand approached from bottom of the cluster of tomatoes and grasped one tomato softly like a cage. Furthermore the robot hand shape induced the stem of the tomato to the cutter while closing the robot hand. Through the Tomato Robot Competition, our proposed method achieved the tomatoes harvesting without damage.