Integrated gripper and cutter in a mobile robotic system for harvesting greenhouse products

A novel integrated gripper and cutter is developed and tested on a robotic system for harvesting greenhouse products. The integrated tool is unique, and has many potential applications. It can pick up vegetables such as tomatoes, and fruits such as apples, grapes, crab apples, cherries. The integrated end-effector with gripper and cutter is small in size, light in weight, efficient in design, and low in cost. It is easy to use and can effectively perform the holding and cutting. It can be easily installed on robot manipulators, and can effectively harvest greenhouse products. The end-effector requires small robot payload due to its light weight, and can be mounted to small robots for harvesting fruits and vegetables. Experiments show that it can effectively pick up vegetables and fruits from plants and accurately place them to a container beside the robot. It only takes an average of 37 s for harvesting one fruit in laboratory tests. The successful rate of harvesting is almost 100% if the robot can accurately move the integrated end-effector to the work point on the fruit peduncle.