Articles
Recent work on robotic pruning of upright fruiting offshoot cherry systems
Article number
1360_22
Pages
185 – 190
Language
English
Abstract
Dormant season pruning is a labor-intensive orchard activity critical to the production of high quality tree fruit.
Due to rising costs and increasing uncertainty about the future availability of farm workers, there is significant interest in automating selective pruning.
This paper describes an ongoing research project at Oregon State University and Washington State University to develop an autonomous pruning system.
To expedite progress and validate our approach, we started with the Upright Fruiting Offshoot orchard system, which has relatively simple pruning rules.
Our integrated system includes a seven degree of freedom robot with an eye-in-hand pruning end-effector.
The robot uses online visual feedback and a controller trained entirely in simulation to precisely guide the cutting device to the targeted pruning point.
During recent field trials, the robot successfully cut 22 of 38 target branches.
Of the 16 failures, six were due to a failure to plan to the approach position, and the remaining ten were due to the robot missing the branch as it attempted to cut.
Future work will focus on improving robustness and throughput as well as generalizing our approach to other orchard systems with more complicated pruning rules.
Due to rising costs and increasing uncertainty about the future availability of farm workers, there is significant interest in automating selective pruning.
This paper describes an ongoing research project at Oregon State University and Washington State University to develop an autonomous pruning system.
To expedite progress and validate our approach, we started with the Upright Fruiting Offshoot orchard system, which has relatively simple pruning rules.
Our integrated system includes a seven degree of freedom robot with an eye-in-hand pruning end-effector.
The robot uses online visual feedback and a controller trained entirely in simulation to precisely guide the cutting device to the targeted pruning point.
During recent field trials, the robot successfully cut 22 of 38 target branches.
Of the 16 failures, six were due to a failure to plan to the approach position, and the remaining ten were due to the robot missing the branch as it attempted to cut.
Future work will focus on improving robustness and throughput as well as generalizing our approach to other orchard systems with more complicated pruning rules.
Authors
J.R. Davidson, A. You, N. Parayil, J. Gopala Krishna, M. Whiting, M. Karkee, C. Grimm
Keywords
dormant pruning, autonomous systems, agricultural robotics, manipulator
Groups involved
- Division Precision Horticulture and Engineering
- Division Plant-Environment Interactions in Field Systems
- Division Vine and Berry Fruits
- Division Tropical and Subtropical Fruit and Nuts
- Division Plant Genetic Resources, Breeding and Biotechnology
- Division Temperate Tree Nuts
- Division Temperate Tree Fruits
- Division Vegetables, Roots and Tubers
- Division Sustaining Horticulture in a Changing World
- Working Group Mechanization, Digitization, Sensing and Robotics
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