Authors

Abstract

Picking sweet peppers by hand is often time-consuming and laborious. To overcome this, in the current study, we developed an end effector for mechanized and non-destructive harvesting of sweet pepper. The design includes grip modules, shear modules and control systems. Based on the establishment of an approximate mathematical model of sweet pepper fruit and the analysis of the biomechanical characteristics of sweet pepper fruit, a pinch finger was proposed. The proposed mechanism is able to successfully achieve non-destructive and stable fixation of sweet pepper and fruit bunches. Key parameters of peduncles cutting were obtained by the cutting test. A cutting mechanism was then designed to achieve efficient separation of the fruit and fruit stem. The designed end effector achieves precise control through a single-chip microcomputer and multi-sensor integrated control system to achieve mature target fruits. The test results showed that the picking success rate, damage rate and picking time of peppers were 93.3%, 1.6% and 5 seconds, respectively. The end effector designed for sweet pepper picking has a simple and reliable structure, which provides a reference for further research on sweet pepper picking robots.

Abstract in Chinese

手工采摘甜椒通常既费时又费力。为了克服这一点，在目前的研究中，我们开发了一种用于机械化和无损采摘甜椒的末端执行器。该设计包括夹紧模块、剪切模块和控制系统。在建立甜椒果实近似数学模型的基础上，结合对甜椒果实生物力学特性的分析，提出了夹指。所提出的机制能够成功地实现甜椒和果簇的无损稳定夹紧。通过对果穗的扦插试验，获得了果穗扦插的关键参数。然后设计了一种分离机构来实现果实和果柄的有效分离。所设计的末端执行器通过单片机和多传感器集成控制系统实现精确控制，并结合图像分割技术，精确获取成熟的目标果实。试验结果表明，辣椒的采摘成功率、损伤率和采摘时间分别为93.3%、1.6%和5s。所设计的甜椒采摘末端执行器结构简单可靠，为后续甜椒采摘机器人的研究提供了参考。