Late-season `Valencia' Orange Mechanical Harvesting with an Abscission Agent and Low-frequency Harvesting

Winter Drought Stress Can Delay Flowering and Avoid Immature Fruit Loss during Late-season Mechanical Harvesting of ‘Valencia’ Oranges

We determined if winter drought stress could delay flowering and fruit development of immature ‘Valencia’ sweet oranges to avoid young fruit loss during late-season mechanical harvesting. Beginning in December over three consecutive seasons (2007–2009), Tyvek water-resistive barrier material was used as a rain shield groundcover under 13to 15-year-old trees. There were three treatments: 1) drou...

Oleocellosis Injury of Fruitlets from Late-season Mechanical Harvesting of ‘Valencia’ Orange Trees after Different Irrigation Treatments Does Not Affect Internal Fruit Quality

Oleocellosis or oil spotting on the peel of citrus fruit is a common post-harvest injury caused by improper handling. Mechanical injury allows phytotoxic oil to leak out of oil glands and cause injury to surrounding flavedo cells, resulting in oleocellosis. Mechanical harvesting (MH) of ‘Valencia’ sweet orange is conducted in late spring, when the next season’s fruitlets are in their early stag...

A low frequency rotational energy harvesting system

This paper presents a rotary power scavenging unit comprised of two systems of flexible beams connected by two masses which are joined by means of a spring, considering a PZT (QP16N, Midé Corporation) piezoelectric sheet mounted on one of the beams. The energy harvesting (EH) system is mounted rigidly on a rotating hub. The gravitational force on the masses causes sustained oscillatory motion i...

Vision and neural control for an orange harvesting robot

We describe the system control architecture of a large, orange harvesting robot. This robot has two independent electrically driven telescopic arms mounted on a common platform which is itself held by a large hydraulic arm. This arm, in turn, is mounted on a tracked vehicle. The telescopic arms have cameras within the end-eeectors, that are used to detect and to measure the position and distanc...

MEMS Energy Harvesting from Low-Frequency and Low-Amplitude Vibrations