Design and experimentation of multi-fruit envelope-cutting kiwifruit picking robot

Currently kiwifruit picking process mainly leverages manual labor, which has low productivity and high labor intensity, meanwhile, the existing kiwifruit picking machinery also has low picking efficiency and easily damages fruits. In this regard, a kiwifruit picking robot suitable for orchard operations was developed in this paper for kiwifruit grown in orchard trellis style. First, based on the analysis of kiwifruit growth pattern and cultivation parameters, the expected design requirements and objectives of a kiwifruit picking robot were proposed, and the expected workflow of the robot in the kiwifruit orchard environment was given, which in turn led to a multi-fruit envelope-cutting kiwifruit picking robot was designed. Then, the D-H method was used to establish the kinematic Equations of the kiwifruit-picking robot, the forward and inverse kinematic calculations were carried out, and the Monte Carlo method was used to analyze the workspace of the robot. By planning the trajectory of the robotic arm and calculating critical nodes in the picking path, the scheme of trajectory planning of the robot was given, and MATLAB software was applied to simulate the motion trajectory as well as to verify the feasibility of the trajectory planning scheme and the picking strategy. Finally, a kiwifruit picking test bed was set up to conduct picking tests in the form of fruit clusters. The results show that the average time to pick each cluster of fruit was 9.7s, the picking success rate was 88.0%, and the picking damage rate was 7.3%. All the indicators met the requirements of the expected design of the kiwifruit-picking robot.