Research on the recognition method for obscured apple in natural environment

The recognition method for apple fruits in natural environment was developed. Firstly, the OTSU dynamic threshold segmentation method with I₂ color characteristic in the I₁I₂I₃ color space was chosen for apple images segmentation. Secondly, the apple fruits were recognized by edge detection and the improved RHT transformation method, the overlapped apples and severely obscured apples by the branches and leaves were respectively done the separation and restoration operations before they were recognized. At last, some fruits recognition experiments were done for apples in three different states with the non-obscured, overlapped and severely obscured by branches and leaves. The results showed that this proposed method was feasible and can basically meet the requirements of robot picking.