Design of End-effector for Tomato Robotic Harvesting

In order to improve automatic harvesting for fresh-eating tomato, a new picking end-effector was designed, which mainly consisted of three parts, such as fruit holding, stem holding, and fruit separating. In view of the convenience of stemless fruit for transport and package, the end-effector separated the tomato fruit from the plant at the abscission layer between the stem and fruit. A sleeve with three equispaced gasbags was used as the flexible fruit-holding part, so as to fit the fruit's various size and keep the holding force constant. Besides, the holding and separating force parameters were calculated based on the measuring result of the fruit material characteristics, so that the holding operation is reliable and nondestructive. Finally, the end-effector's performance was tested, and the result showed the successful picking rate was 86%.