Review of smart robots for fruit and vegetable picking in agriculture

The fruit and vegetable picking has posed a great challenge on the production and markets during the harvest season. Manual picking cannot fully meet the rapid requirements of each market, mainly due to the high labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks, even the aging and shortage of agricultural la...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of agricultural and biological engineering 2022, Vol.15 (1), p.33-54
Main Authors: Wang, Zhiheng, Xun, Yi, Wang, Yingkuan, Yang, Qinghua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Algorithms
Apples
Bibliometrics
Cameras
End effectors
Fruits
Harvest
Labor
Labor force
Performance evaluation
Picking
Planting
Robot arms
Robotics
Robots
Success
Vegetables
Vision systems
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The fruit and vegetable picking has posed a great challenge on the production and markets during the harvest season. Manual picking cannot fully meet the rapid requirements of each market, mainly due to the high labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks, even the aging and shortage of agricultural labor force in recent years. Alternatively, smart robotics can be an efficient solution to increase the planting areas for the markets in combination with changes in cultivation, preservation, and processing technology. However, some improvements still need to be performed on these picking robots. To document the progress in and current status of this field, this study performed a bibliometric analysis. This analysis evaluated the current performance characteristics of various fruit and vegetable picking robots for better prospects in the future. Five perspectives were proposed covering the robotic arms, end effectors, vision systems, picking environments, and picking performance for the large-scale mechanized production of fruits and vegetables in modern agriculture. The current problems of fruit and vegetable picking robots were summarized. Finally, the outlook of the fruit and vegetable picking robots prospected from four aspects: structured environment for fruit planting, the algorithm of recognition and positioning, picking efficiency, and cost-saving picking robots. This study comprehensively assesses the current research status, thus helping researchers steer their projects or locate potential collaborators.
ISSN:1934-6344
1934-6352
DOI:10.25165/j.ijabe.20221501.7232