Current Developments in Automated Citrus Harvesting

The area of intelligent automated citrus harvesting has become a renewed area of research in recent years. The renewed interest is a result of increased economic demand for better solutions for selective automated citrus harvesting than are currently available by purely mechanical harvesters. Throughout this paper the main challenges facing intelligent automated citrus harvesting are addressed: fruit detection and robotic harvesting. The area of fruit detection is discussed, and incorporates the important properties of citrus that can be used for detection. Robotic harvesting is covered, and involves the discussion of the main mechanical design needs as well as the use of visual servoing for the control of the robotic harvester. A description of our proposed intelligent citrus harvesting system as well as our current prototype is presented.