Integrated gripper and cutter in a mobile manipulation robotic system for harvesting greenhouse products

Abstract

A new integrated gripper and cutter is developed and tested on a robotic system for harvesting greenhouse products. The integrated gripper and cutter is unique, and has many potential applications. It can pick up vegetables such as tomatoes, and also pick up fruits such as apples, grapes, crab apples, and cherries. The integrated end-effector with gripper and cutter is small in size, light in weight, efficient in design, and low in cost. It is easy to use and can effectively perform holding and cutting. It can effectively harvest greenhouse products. The developed end-effector requires small robot payload due to its light weight, and can be mounted to small robots to harvest fruits and vegetables. Experiments show that the integrated gripper and cutter can effectively pick up vegetables and fruits from plants and accurately place them to a container beside the robot. It takes an average of37 seconds to harvest one fruit in laboratory tests. The successful rate of harvesting is almost 100% if the robot can accurately move the integrated end-effector to the work point on the fruit peduncle.