END-EFFECTORS FOR PETTY-TOMATO HARVESTING ROBOT

摘要

Production of petty-tomato has been increasing recently in Japan because of its preferable size and taste, however it takes long time to harvest since its fruit cluster has many fruits and they must be harvested one by one without damage. Therefore robot which can harvest petty-tomato fruits by its manipulator automatically is desirable. In this study, two end-effectors for petty-tomato harvesting were developed using pneumatic tube between end-effector and vessel on the base of robot. The end-effectors pulled fruit into the head and detached it from its peduncle at the joint. The harvested fruit was sent to the vessel through the tube by pneumatic force. So the manipulator did not need to transfer the fruit one by one. When the fruit was detached,one end-effector nipped around the joint after the fruit was pulled into the head of end-effector pneumatically, while the other one sucked fruit and bent at the joint. The manipulator had 2 prismatic joints and 5 rotational joints. The lengths of upperarm and fore arm were 250 mm and 200 mm, while strokes of the prismatic joints are 200 mm and 300 mm. The harvesting experiments were done in greenhouse after each end-effector was attached to the manipulator. From the results, the feasibility to harvestthe petty-tomato by these end-effectors was found.