• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.411-420
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• 1997

The mechanization efficiency using high ability machines such as tractors or combines in a paddy field rice farm is high. Mechanization in harvesting fruits and vegetables is difficult, because they are easy to be damaged. Therefore, Advanced techniques for careful handling fruits and vegetables are necessary in automation and robotization. An apple harvesting robot must have a recognition device to detect the positioning of fruit, manipulators which function like human arms, and hand to take off the fruit. This study is related to the development of a rotatic hand as the first stage in developing the apple harvesting robot. The results are summarized as follows. 1. It was found that a hand that was eccentric in rotatory motion, was better than a hand of semicircular up-and-down motion in harvesting efficiency. 2. The hand was developed to control changes in grasp forces by using tape-type switch sensor which was attatched to fingers' inside. 3. Initial finger positioning was set up to control accurate harvesting by using a tow step fingering position. 4. This study showed the possibility of apple harvesting using the developed robot hand.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.19-28
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• 2023

In the fruit harvesting field, interest in automatic robot harvesting is increasing due to various seasonality and rising harvesting costs. Accurate apple detection is a difficult problem in complex orchard environments with changes in light, vibrations caused by wind, and occlusion of leaves and branches. In this paper, we introduce a dataset and an adaptive heatmap regression model that are advantageous for robot automatic apple harvesting. The apple dataset was labeled with not only the apple location but also the visibility. We propose a method to detect the center point of an apple using an adaptive heatmap regression model that adjusts the Gaussian shape according to visibility. The experimental results showed that the performance of the proposed method was applicable to apple harvesting robots, with MAP@K of 0.9809 and 0.9801 when K=5 and K=10, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1998.12a
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• pp.481-486
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• 1998

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.257-262
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• 2000

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.399-408
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• 2000

This study is final focused on developing fruit harvesting robot can distinguish fruit type and status accurately. Multi-joint robot is able to discriminate tree shape and select mature fruit by image processing. The multi-joint robot consists of (a) rotating base, (b)turning first joint-arm, (c)rotating and turning second joint-arm, (d)rotating and turning third joint-arm, (e)rotating and turning last joint and (f)picker hand. The operational ranges of the robot are: horizontal 860~2,220mm, vertical 1,440~2,260mm, 270 degrees’rotation angle, 90 or 270 degrees’turning angle. The robot weighs 330kg. The multi-joint robot was designed in high accuracy and efficiency by getting as close as the movements of human arms and waist.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.141-147
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• 2002

생물 생산의 여러 과정 중에서도 자동화 기계의 개발과 제어 기술이 요구되는 부분은 이식이나 접목, 작물의 관리, 수확 등의 정밀한 반복 작업으로 볼 수 있다. 특히, 로봇에 의한 수확 작업중의 하나인 과실 수확 로봇은 각각의 대상물을 직접 다루어야 하면서도, 과실의 특성상 수확 작업에 의한 손상의 위험이 크기 때문에 정교한 제어가 요구된다. (중략)

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.281-286
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• 2004

The end-effector is the one of the important factors on development of the cucumber robot to harvester a cucumber. Three end-effectors were designed the single blade end-effector with one blade, the double blade end-effector with two blades and the triple blade end-effector with three blades. Performance tests of the end-effector, the fully integrated system, were conducted to determine the cutting rate by using two different kinds of cucumber. The success rates of cucumber cutting ratio of single end-effector, double end-effector and triple end-effector in laboratory. were 61.7%, 95%, 86.7%, respectively. The cutting rate of single blade or double blade was a little difference with respect to the different diameters of cucumber stem. However, the success cutting rate of the end-effector with triple blade was 61.7% under 29mm diameter of a grabbing stem section. The triple end-effector was not suitable for harvesting a cucumber, but was considered to be suitable for harvesting a grape, an apple and a tomato. The success rate of cucumber cutting ratio of triple end-effectors in greenhouse was 84%. The failure cutting rate was 16% which are due to abnormal shape of cucumber fruit.