Yasunori Shibano

Agricultural robot in grape production system

A multipurpose agricultural robot which works in vineyard has been studied. This robot, which consists of a manipulator, a visual sensor, a travelling device and end-effecters, is able to do several works by changing the end-effecters. Four end-effectors for harvesting, berry thinning, spraying and bagging have been developed for this robot system. The harvesting end-effector which grasps and cuts rachis was able to harvest bunches with no damage. The berry thinning end-effector which consists of three unified bunch shape parts. The spraying end-effector sprays the target uniformly, and the bagging end-effector is able to put bags on growing bunches one by one continuously. From the experimental results in a field and laboratory, it was observed that each end-effector could perform efficiently.

Study on Quality Evaluation of Orange Fruit Using Image Processing

Abstract It is important to classify fruit after harvesting according to its quality, but many kinds of fruits are classified based on only their size or shape. Generally speaking, Iyokan orange fruit whose color is reddish, whose size is medium, whose height is short and whose surface is glossy is sweet, however, the criterion depends on worker for classification and on district in Japan. In this paper, investigation to evaluate Iyokan orange fruit using image processing objectively is described. From the results, it was observed that the features extracted from image had some relationship to the fruit quality.