Robotic Mass Removal of Citrus Fruits

Almost all citrus is harvested by hand. The resulting high cost in the U.S. is burden to growers and positions them at a disadvantage to overseas competitors with low labor costs. Automated methods are needed to ensure the long-term viability and prosperity of the U.S. citrus industry. Past attempts at automated harvesting have largely focused on either bulk removal without extensive sensing and computer control or on robotic methods that remove one or few oranges at a time with a complex manipulator, sensing, and computer control. Neither of these families of techniques has yet found industry-changing commercial success. Energid Technologies proposes a new approach that combines robotic technologies with mass removal. It uses a system of many cameras and special picking mechanisms that are integrated and controlled through a computer infrastructure that uses multiple processors and microprocessor cores. It is a goal of this project to exchange expensive hardware with computer processing and software and thereby reduce incremental system cost and maintenance costs to the level of commercial viability. The focus of the Phase I research is to prove the two components of the system with the most risk: the vision system and the novel picking mechanism. To do this, Energid will capture representative field imagery that will be processed offline for validation, and we will construct a prototype picking mechanism to verify its actuation and effectiveness. The new harvesting system produced by this research will enhance opportunities for U.S. growers. By reducing harvesting costs, citrus growing operations will become more profitable and cost competitive with other citrus-growing countries. The new system will remove uncertainty surrounding the availability of labor. Currently, when labor is not available, harvesting becomes expensive or difficult. With automated harvesting, labor productivity will be higher, and the industry will be less dependent on the labor supply.