Intelligent Tea-Picking System Based on Active Computer Vision and Internet of Things

Intelligent farming machines are becoming a new trend in modern agriculture. The intelligence and automation allow planting to become data-driven, leading to more timely and cost-effective production and management of farms and improving the quality and output of farm products. This paper presents a proposal for developing a type of intelligent tea picking machine based on active computer vision and Internet of Things (IoT) techniques. The intelligent tea picking machine possesses an active vision system for new tip positioning and can automatically implement tea picking operation in the natural environment. The active vision system provided with a cross-light path of projection and camera is designed according to the actual characteristics of picking surface, where new tips can be recognized by referring to the color factor and their height information is easily acquired by fringe projection profilometry. Furthermore, the machine attaches wireless communication equipment to transmit the real-time status of the tea picking process to an intermediary platform and eventually to the Internet for extensive data analysis. The data such as color factor and quantity of new tips collected through IoT can be used for different quality and production evaluations. The focus of this paper can promote the automation and intelligence of tea pickers and agricultural machinery. © 2021 Jing Zhang and Zhaochun Li.