Improvements to and large‐scale evaluation of a robotic kiwifruit harvester

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Abstract

Abstract The growing popularity of kiwifruit orchards in New Zealand is increasing the already high demand for seasonal labourers. A novel robotic kiwifruit harvester has been designed and built to help meet this demand [H. A. Williams et al. Biosystems Eng. 181 (2019), pp. 140–156]. Early evaluations of the platform have shown good results with the system capable of harvesting 51.0% of 1,456 kiwifruit in four bays with an average cycle‐time of 5.5 s/fruit. However, the harvester's high cycle‐time, and high fruit loss rate at 23.4%, prevent it from being commercially viable. This paper presents two new developments for the harvesting system, a new vision system and two new gripper variations designed to overcome the harvester's previous limitations. Furthermore, we have designed and conducted the largest real‐world evaluation of a robotic fruit harvesting system published to date with over 12,000 kiwifruit involved. The results of this trial demonstrated that our kiwifruit harvester is one of the most effective selective fruit harvesters in the world capable of successfully harvesting 86.0% of reachable fruit, and 55.8% of all kiwifruit with a cycle‐time of 2.78 s/fruit.

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