DEVELOPMENT OF 3-D POSITION DETECTING TECHNIQUE BY PAN/TILT

It is very difficult to mechanize tomato harvesting because identifying a tomato partly covered with leaves and stalks is not easy. This research was conducted to develop tomato harvesting robot which can identify a target tomato, determine its three dimensional position, and harvest it in a limited time. Followings were major findings in this study. The first visual system of the harvesting robot was composed of two CCD cameras, however, this could not detect tomatoes which are not seen on the view finder of the camera especially those partly covered by leaves or stalks. The second visual device, combined with two CCD cameras and pan/tilt procedures was designed to minimize the positioning errors within ${\pm}10mm$, but this is still not enough to detect tomatoes partly covered with leaves etc. Finally, laser distance detector was added to the visual system that could reduce the position detecting errors within 10mm in X-Y direction and 5mm in Z direction for the partly covered tomatoes.