Engineering and Horticultural Aspects of Robotic Fruit Harvesting: Opportunities and Constraints

● January–March 2005 15(1) well as the limited potential market for specialty harvesters for these minor crops. Clear interactions exist between the cultivar, cultural practices, a mechanical harvester and several postharvest requirements. As a result, a system-level approach is critical for developing economically viable, highly automated vegetable production systems. Furthermore, improvements in plant architectures and yields and other modifi cations to crops are required before some vegetables can be machine harvested. Some of the attributes requiring further development include, but are not limited to, better fruit location within the plant structure, more uniform fruit sets, increased mechanical damage resistance, prevention of premature or diffi cult fruit detachment, and more robust postharvest quality and stability. The integration of new technologies including DGPS, automatic machine guidance, and computerbased vision systems offers signifi cant performance benefi ts, and is a substantial component of current vegetable production and harvesting research in the U.S. As costs continue to decrease for these new technologies, commercial adoption will increase.