Robots are equipped with two arms to help harvest cucumbers

Humans have to work a lot in extreme weather conditions, on cucumber farms in India and Eastern Europe. To save costs, time, as well as manpower, Fraunhofer teamed up with German and Spanish researchers to complete a cucumber harvesting project with field experiments, called CATCH for short. The goal of this project is to create a robot that can handle cucumber harvesting as well as other similar agricultural jobs.

The CATCH team is developing a two-handed robotic system made of light, low-cost modules, designed to ensure reliable and efficient targets. Ideally the robot can identify cucumbers that can be harvested and use clamped arms, with 5 levels of freedom to pick melon and keep cucumber with minimal damage. The robot must do all this while ensuring the speed of picking cucumbers exceeds the level of 13 per minute of humans.

Robots are equipped with two arms to help harvest cucumbers Picture 1

The CATCH project is developing three hand-clamped models for robots, the first with the use of vacuum technology, the second clamp with bionic jaws and a third clamping hand specially designed to hold cucumbers. The dual arm system will use software developed for industrial robots - Workbot I, but is modified to make it more flexible in cucumber harvesting.

Dr Dragoljub Surdilovic, a Fraunhofer IPK scientist, said: "The robot can push the leaves aside by symmetrical or asymmetrical movements, or homogeneous movements. Therefore, it can be automated. change direction to approach and then pick a cucumber. "

The robot will use optical and tactile sensors, including polygon cameras, which are connected to a smart image processing system to identify cucumbers or stems or leaves. According to Fraunhofer, the Spanish partner of CATCH, CSIC-UPM has developed a camera that can detect and identify cucumbers with a 95% success rate. The goal is for robots to accurately identify ripe or green cucumbers .

According to Fraunhofer, the robotic system was preliminarily tested in July 2017 at the Institute of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the Leibniz Institute, which includes the use of different cucumbers, both in size and size. Harvesting robots. With proven basic functions, the team hopes to create a more advanced, commercial robot in the future.

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