Mobile Fruit Grading Robot -Concept and prototype-

In this study, a mobile fruit grading robot for information-added product in precision agriculture was developed. The prototype robot, which consisted of a manipulator, an endeffector, a machine vision system, and a mobile mechanism, was made. The robot could acquire five fruit images from four sides and the top while its manipulator transported the fruit received from the operator. A preliminary experiment was conducted with 372 samples of sweet pepper in variety of “TosahikariD ” in laboratory. A fruit mass prediction method was developed by use of the five images. Results indicated that the fruit mass was successfully estimated with projection areas for the variety.