Development of an end-effector for a tomato cluster harvesting robot

An end-effector was developed for a tomato cluster harvesting robot. This end-effector can harvest not individual fruits but a whole fruit cluster to improve the robot's harvest efficiency. Experiments for harvesting tomato clusters were conducted in a high-density plant training system. According to a harvesting algorithm, the end-effector was able to perform well, even when target peduncle orientations were not given. Although the success rate of harvesting tomato clusters was 50 %, it is considered that this rate would improve if an end-effector is used for the high-wire tomato plant training systems in Dutch systems where the node lengths of plants are long enough to loosely hold the main stems.