• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.367-372
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• 2010

Consumption of pepper, a major spice vegetable used for seasoning Kimchi, continues to increase, but cultivation is in decline due to shortage of rural labor in Korea. The 39.2% of total labor requirement for conventional pepper cultivation was available for harvesting work. Therefore conventional manual harvesting should be turned to mechanical harvesting for labor-saving, cost-reducing and easy work. Surveys on conventional pepper cultivation patterns, labor requirements for various pepper cultivation works, and farmers' opinions on the mechanization of pepper harvesting were conducted to obtain basic informations. The labor requirement for pepper harvesting was 954 h/ha out of a total labor requirement of 2,436 h/ha for pepper cultivation. Harvesting was the hardest work, and hiring workmen for harvesting was also difficult. Farmers preferred to develop a small-scale pepper harvester using agricultural tractor or cultivar. Most farmer agreed to change cultivation pattern for mechanization of pepper harvesting, but hesitated to adopt new one-time-harvesting pepper varieties.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.12-20
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• 2016

Purpose: Pepper prices have risen continuously because of a decrease in cultivation area; therefore, mechanical harvesting systems for peppers should be developed to reduce cost, time, and labor during harvest. In this study, a screw type picking head for a self-propelled pepper harvester was developed, and the optimal working conditions were evaluated considering helix types, winding directions of helix, and rotational speeds of the helix. Methods: The screw type was selected for the picking head after analyzing previous studies, and the device consisted of helices and a feed chain mechanism for conveying pepper branches. A double helix and a triple helix were manufactured, and rotational speeds of 200, 300, and 400 rpm were tested. The device was controlled by a variable speed (VS) motor and an inverter. Both the forward and reverse directions were tested for the winding and rotating directions of the helix. An experiment crop (cultivar: Longgreenmat) was cultivated in a plastic greenhouse. The test results were analyzed using the SAS program with ANOVA to examine the relationship between each factor and the performance of the picking head. Results: The results of the double and triple helix tests in the reverse direction showed gross harvest efficiency levels of 60-95%, mechanical damage rates of 8-20%, and net marketable portion rates of 50-80%. The dividing ratio was highest at a rotational speed of 400 rpm. Gross harvest efficiency was influenced by the types of helix and rotational speed. Net marketable portion was influenced by rotational speed but not influenced by the type of helix. Mechanical damage was not influenced by the type of helix or rotational speed. Conclusions: Best gross harvest efficiency was obtained at a rotational speed of 400 rpm; however, operating the device at that speed resulted in vibration, which should be reduced.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.99-109
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• 2023

In this paper, the cinch bag typed fruit harvesting gripper was proposed. This gripper is focused on preventing problems that we found from the related research and setting the breakthrough as a design condition according to the harvest failures of other related studies. The cover part is designed to overcome the surrounding obstacles of target fruits such as tomato, Korean melon, and sweet pepper. The measurement of maximum load showed that the well-grasped target object, such as a spherical object with 65 mm of diameter, is unable to slip in a range of 0 kg to 10 kg. The fact that the gripper allows from 4 cm to 6 cm of positional error was shown in the measurement of positional error tolerance. And the cover part of this gripper showed that the suggested gripper can grab a target object without being obstructed by leaves and stems. Finally, it was proved that the gripper satisfied the design conditions through the measurement of contacting force, which showed it is appropriate for grasping an actual fruit without damage.