Evaluation of End Effectors for Robotic Harvesting of Mango Fruit

The task of gripping has been identified as the rate-limiting step in development tree-fruit harvesting systems. There is, however, no set universally adopted ‘specifications’ with standardized measurement procedures for characterization gripper performance harvest soft tree fruit. A metrics were defined evaluation end effectors used based on (i) laboratory-based trials using termed ‘picking area’, which was cross-sectional area a plane normal to direction approach fruit successfully harvested by gripper; volume’, volume space and ‘grasp force’, peak force involved removing from grasp (ii) orchard-based ‘detachment success’ ‘harvest success’, i.e., % attempts (of given canopy architecture) that resulted stalk breakage return receiving area, respectively; (iii) postharvest damage terms score percentage severity damage. Evaluations made external (skin) visible 1 h after internal (flesh) ripening use illustrated an empirical nine designs mango context weight orientation gripper. design six flexible fingers achieved picking ~150 cm2 467 cm3 laboratory involving 636 g phantom well detachment efficiency rates 74 65%, respectively, orchard associated unripe Additional are also proposed. Use these future studies is recommended literature–performance comparisons.