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Detecting strawberries is easy, but there are several factors once you've done that. You need to determine the location, the orientation to determine the best
by joshvm 8y ago
Detecting strawberries is easy, but there are several factors once you've done that.
You need to determine the location, the orientation to determine the best cutting angle (and then finding a motion solution for the robot). You need to determine if the fruit is occluded and if you can actually reach it. A human will instinctively move foliage out of the way. A robot has to have some way of doing that without destroying the plant.
Different companies have different approaches. I really like the agrobot method which cups the strawberry and then pulls it upwards, severing the stem. Grasping is not viable right now, in my opinion, it's too easy to damage the crop. There's lots of research going on (force-torque sensors, adaptive/smart grasping), but it's still in universities.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoRobots can have smaller hands, even tentacles, and not have the same problems with 'things in the way'. Robots aren't going to pick strawberries like a person would, and its going to be the innovations that make this an interesting solution.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoThe issue is that there are actually many implicit constraints on the motion plans by which robots would pick strawberries, and when you make any one of them explicit, your whole robots solution might have to be redesigned from the ground up.