Development of a Fruit Harvesting Robot(II) -Determination of Fruit Location by a Closed-Circuit TV Camera-

과실수확(果實收穫) 로봇에 관한 연구(硏究)(II) -폐쇄회로(閉鎖回路) TV 카메라에 의한 과실(果實)의 위치검출(位置檢出)-

The most important subject in developing agricultural robots for fruit harvesting is to detect accurately the location of a fruit about the given coordinate system. This study was carried out to develop an image processing algorithm which enables finding out the three dimensional locations of a fruit. The digital image processing device consisted of an optosensor (Closed-circuit TV camera), image processing interface board (Digitizer) and microcomputer (IBM PC/AT). A stereo-image processing method using the two cameras attached to the manipulator was evaluated through experiment with apples. The accuracy and quickness of detecting the location of apples by this method was not satisfactory. The maximum errors of the detected locations by the stereo-image processing method in x-, Y-, and z- directions were 3, 4 and 4 cm, respectively. The maximum time required to get the rectangular coordinate data of a fruit was about 2 minutes.