AIM
To design an automated & intelligent robot which plucks & picks fruits from the trees in the fruit gardens and carries to the required place and dumps in a container. The robot will move throughout the fruit garden and reaches all areas of the tree to pluck and pick fruits like mango, strawberry, orange and other fruits having similar shape and size without damaging the fruits and other parts of tree like branches, leaves etc.
PURPOSE
One of the major problems faced by the fruit growers is the fruit getting damaged due to falling on ground while plucking from the tree which results in huge loss to the fruit grower. Another major problem faced by the fruit growers is shortage of skilled labour due to which the fruit grower is unable to harvest the fruits at right time. As a result, the fruit gets over-ripened and becomes useless which also results in loss to the fruit grower. The fruit plucking robot which we are designing will overcome these problems and the loss to the fruit grower is avoided.
REQUIREMENTS
Software: National instruments Labview
Hardware: Touch (Proximity), temperature and pressure sensors, DC and stepper motors,
gyroscope, ARM7 microcontroller, camera
IMPLEMENTATION
The robot will identify the fruits on the tree using image/video processing technology.A camera is placed in the robot which takes the picture/video of the tree. Using the image/video processed information and sensors, the robot will locate the fruits which are in the harvesting stage and moves towards the tree.A control system is designed in the robot for the stretching of the robotic arm and rising vertically upwards to the required height and horizontal movement to reach to the fruits.The arm will be having three fingers to hold the fruit. Two side arms are attached to the main arm, one to hold a cutter to cut the stalk and another to hold a carrier to collect the fruit.Use of touch and pressure sensors makes the robot to cut the fruit stalk and place the fruit in the carrier. After collecting a fixed quantity of fruits in the carrier, the arm will be outstretched and come down and then the carrier will dump the collected fruits in to the fruit container attached to the robot. The process will repeat to pluck the fruits further.A user interface is provided to the grower to select the variety of fruit which is to be plucked.
CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS
The terrain in the fruit gardens will not be even and also there will be many obstacles coming in the way of movement of the robot. To overcome the challenge the robot is designed to move using obstacle sensors and motors with gear mechanism. The robot is also designed to work in a weather condition like fog, rain etc. The limitation of the robot is that it is not designed to pluck big size and heavy weight fruits like jack fruit, papaya and also very small fruits like grapes.
CONCLUSION
The fruit plucking robot which is being designed by us once comes in to use, it will solve lot of problems faced by fruit growers during harvesting. The problems like shortage of skilled labour, long process of manually plucking of fruits, damage of fruits, over ripening of fruits, high cost of labour, danger for the labour personnel from thorns & reptiles in the gardens etc are the major head-weights for the fruit growers. The fruit plucking robot is the ultimate solution to the above said problems and it will ease the head-weights of fruit growers. As a result the fruit growers will be encouraged to grow more and more fruits. Also the use of fruit plucking robot is a important step in the modernization of technology in the field of agriculture.
TEAM
The following final year BE students of MVJCE, Bangalore
1) SALMAN BAIG Y
2) AKASH R BHAT
3) PRANESHKUMAR V P
4) PALLAVI VARSHNEY
5) PURNIMA AVADHANY
FACULTY GUIDE
Mr Prabhakar Manage, Asst. Professor, EC Department, MVJCE, Bangalore
