Harvesting Intelligence: Advancements in Fruit Picking Through Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Fruit harvester is an autonomous robot that aims to provide ease to the farmers, as agriculture is the backbone of the economy of Pakistan. Pakistan is a country that faces intense weather conditions that makes it difficult for the farmers to work in those conditions by themselves or even if they hire labor for this purpose, it is a costly deal to hire labor on an hourly basis and provide them food and other facilities as well, a portion of profit gained is spent while harvesting fields. To save that amount of money, fruit harvester is a one-time cost, being a smart machine, it just requires supervision and isn’t affected by weather conditions. The world is focusing on smart working and enhancing efficiency to perform tasks there are robots developed worldwide such as SW 6010 and FF Robot to harvest fruits like strawberries and apples via different mechanisms. A fruit harvester is a robot having the ability to follow a path directed by compass and sonar sensors to avoid obstacles and uses the concepts of image processing to detect, recognize and classify fruits to save time and pluck only those fruits that are healthy to eat. It has a mechanism on the top of it that plucks the fruit and drops it in the basket for collecting. It will be delivered to the customers with a web app so they can easily keep records and track of the work done by the harvester. This product was initially designed to cater to apples only, in the future with time harvester will evolve and be modified by adding a sucking mechanism to it for other fruits as well.