Development of an Automatic Agricultural Fruit Bagging Robot

Abstract

This study aims to develop an automatic agricultural fruit bagging robot that integrates visual recognition and automation of fruit bagging to alleviate the agricultural labor shortage in Taiwan. Using an RGB-D camera, the visual recognition system identifies the young fruits and computes the relative positioning between the fruit and the robot. The automation of fruit bagging is achieved by a custom-designed mechanism that places the young fruit inside a paper bag and secures the bag opening using a twisted cable tie. The process involves lifting the bag to surround the young fruit, securing the bag opening by enclosing two C-shaped jaws, wrapping the bag using a cable tie, cutting the tie, and twisting the tie using a rotating plate. The visual and automatic bagging systems are mounted on a robotic arm for manipulation. A digital twin of the robot is developed for trajectory planning and remote monitoring. The system is empirically built and evaluated experimentally, including visual recognition, robotic arm operation, bagging mechanism design, etc. The experimental results confirm that the system is functional.