We expect automation and robotization to play an essential role in agriculture in the near
future. The reasons for this are primarily the lack of a labour force, the growth of the world's
population, and thus the need for food. Work in agriculture is considered physically
demanding and less popular in developed countries.
We addressed part of this problem in this thesis. We developed a mobile robotic system for
harvesting stem vegetables. We focused primarily on picking asparagus.
After studying the existing systems for picking asparagus, we specified the mechanical design of a mobile robotic system. The robot platform must be robust to travel on rough terrain. To achieve greater productivity and, thus, financial justification, harvesting asparagus must be fast and reliable. We chose a caterpillar drive designed for off-road driving to move the mobile platform. Asparagus is harvested with a parallel robot which is part of the robotic system. We chose the parallel robot because of its low mass, high operation speed and high repeatability. The parallel robot has four degrees of freedom. The three axes are driven by synchronous motors attached to the robot base. Two DC motors are mounted on the robot platform. One motor serves for rotation around the vertical axis, and the other for opening and closing the gripper.
In the next step, we performed low-level and high-level control of the robot system. The low-level controller performed axis movements. It received commands for movements through ADS communication from the high-level control. We implemented high-level control in the
ROS system. We tuned the controller of the parallel robot, performed manual control of all
units and planned the trajectory for picking asparagus.
To detect the asparagus, we used a laser scanner, which we installed at an angle of 45 ° with
respect to the ground. Position-based sampling was used to create the depth image. From the captured depth image, the algorithm detected the locations of asparagus growth. We sorted the asparagus by height. Asparagus taller than 15 cm is suitable for picking, while shorter ones are obstacles.
The operation of the mobile robotic system was tested in a controlled environment. We tested the harvest on a test field of asparagus. Harvesting reliability depends on the speed of the platform and the density of the asparagus growth.
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