PRE2015 4 Groep2

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We are developing an autonomous harvesting robot. The robot will be initially developed for harvesting strawberries. As creating a complete prototype is probably not feasible to do in nine weeks, we start with focusing on the detecting and sensing part. For that we will develop a system which scans fruits and determines their ripeness. It can also consider other factors like for example if the fruit looks appealing.

Group 2 members

• Cameron Weibel (0883114)
• Maarten Visscher (0888263)
• Raomi van Rozendaal (0842742)
• Birgit van der Stigchel (0855323)
• Mark de Jong (0896731)
• Yannick Augustijn (0856560)

USE

User

Primary users are farmers and their workers, who directly use the robot. The following aspects hold:

• Less seasonal costs for farmers as they do not need to hire harvesting workers. New costs arise for the robot: purchase and maintenance costs. To make the robot economically feasible for farmers, the purchase cost should be lower than
• Higher efficiency. Speed of harvesting is not necessarily faster than workers, however the autonomous robot can be left running overnight.
• Farm harvesting workers lose their job.

Farmers and their workers: higher efficiency -Farmers: -Higher efficiency -More harvest -Lower costs due to less employees -They will have more time -Less physical work / Health benefits -Don’t have to train seasonal workers

Secondary users are distributors that pick up the fruits from the farms. They use the robot occasionally when they need to get the fruits that are picked by the robot. The following aspects hold:

-Lower cost for food -There will be more fresh food available(maybe?) -More efficient supply chain -The supermarkets might also be able to give feedback.

A tertiary user is the company that is developing and maintaining this robot. It indirectly uses the robot during development.

Society

See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxKlXUVjSWzHV0Y0RWh3UUpGYzg/view?usp=sharing .

Enterprise

See https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2y3nYcBovfX1FBTmdHSzZ1N1k/view?usp=sharing .

Requirements

Empty still.

Literature

Harvesting robots

• Description of an autonomous cucumber harvesting robot, designed and tested in 2001: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1020568125418

• Paper from 1993 describing the then state-of-the-art and economic aspects. It has a chapter on economic evaluation. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021863483710206

(Older)

• Yamamoto, S., et al. "Development of a stationary robotic strawberry harvester with picking mechanism that approaches target fruit from below (Part 1)-Development of the end-effector." Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery 71.6 (2009): 71-78. Link

• Sam Corbett-Davies , Tom Botterill , Richard Green , Valerie Saxton, An expert system for automatically pruning vines, Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand, November 26-28, 2012, Dunedin, New Zealand Link

• Hayashi, Shigehiko, Katsunobu Ganno, Yukitsugu Ishii, and Itsuo Tanaka. "Robotic Harvesting System for Eggplants." JARQ Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly: JARQ 36.3 (2002): 163-68. Web. Link

• Blasco, J., N. Aleixos, and E. Moltó. "Machine Vision System for Automatic Quality Grading of Fruit." Biosystems Engineering 85.4 (2003): 415-23. Web. Link

• Cubero, Sergio, Nuria Aleixos, Enrique Moltó, Juan Gómez-Sanchis, and Jose Blasco. "Advances in Machine Vision Applications for Automatic Inspection and Quality Evaluation of Fruits and Vegetables." Food Bioprocess Technol Food and Bioprocess Technology 4.4 (2010): 487-504. Web. Link

• Tanigaki, Kanae, et al. "Cherry-harvesting robot." Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 63.1 (2008): 65-72. Direct Dianus
  • Evaluation of a cherry-harvesting robot. It picks by grabbing the peduncle and lifting it upwards.

• Hayashi, Shigehiko, et al. "Evaluation of a strawberry-harvesting robot in a field test." Biosystems Engineering 105.2 (2010): 160-171. Direct Dianus
  • Evaluation of a strawberry-harvesting robot.

State of the art

A small number of tests have been done with machines for harvesting strawberries. These are large, bulky and expensive machines like Agrobot. Cost prices are in the order of 50,000 dollar. Todo: add citations.

A lot of research is done towards inspection by means of machine vision. Todo: add citations and continue.

Further reading

• Agrobot video: https://youtu.be/RKT351pQHfI

• Neural Networks Demystified: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxe2T-V8XRs

• MIT Food Computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEx6K4P4GJc

• Dickson Despommier on the vertical farm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIdP00u2KRA

• Agriculture is the fastest growing robotic sector: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329273

• Japanese firm to open world’s first robot-run farm: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm

• Aeroponics (we most likely won’t use this as an irrigation method): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics

• Polyculture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture

• Why to avoid monoculture: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/agriculture_02

• LED lights for imitating sunlight: http://www.gereports.com/post/105532612260/the-future-of-agriculture-indoor-farms-powered-by/

Manual strawberry harvesting process

Source (move to citation)

Notes

Moved to Talk:PRE2015_4_Groep2.