Evaluation of a boxwood topiary trimming robot

This paper describes a new robot specifically developed for topiary trimming and evaluates its performance through novel evaluation method. Experiments were carried out in real garden letting the trim spherical-, cylindrical- cuboid-shaped boxwood topiaries. The robot's was evaluated using quantitative method, which made accurate 3D point clouds of bush before after photogrammetry. For each these clouds, Euclidean distance to ground-truth shape calculated classified as correctly trimmed (CT) when within 2 cm shape. Using this information percentage CT points compared. Results show reasonable accuracy spherical topiaries, reporting 24 increase points, going from 27% (before) 51% (after) surface. Cylinders cuboids had lower performance, reported an between −0.2 6 point. also qualitatively assessed by human observers scoring highest score single is 3.1 5. These results, combined with that can autonomously, but it does not reach required practical application. Despite this, method able reveal main bottlenecks real-world experiments. Together description, be used guideline development gardening robots.