Design and control of a heavy material handling manipulator for agricultural robots

In this paper, we propose a manipulation system for agricultural robots that handle heavy materials. The structural systems of a mobile platform and a manipulator are selected and designed after proposing new knowledge about agricultural robots. Also, the control systems for these structural systems are designed in the presence of parametric perturbation and uncertainty while avoiding conservative results. The validity of both the structural and control systems is confirmed by conducting watermelon harvesting experiments in an open field. Furthermore, an explicit design procedure is confirmed for both the structural and control systems and three key design tools are clarified.