In our master's thesis, we focused on the issue of handling hooks used in tomato cultivation. The hooks are suspended 5 meters high on steel cables, around which ropes are wound to support the growth of tomatoes. We prototyped and developed a robot that will be capable of autonomously navigating the greenhouse and handling the hooks in the future.
The robot consists of three translational and one rotational axis. For hook manipulation, we developed special fingers with a hook-shaped groove. The robot uses a depth camera to detect the exact location of the hooks.
The results of our work include the kinematic validation of the initial prototype, which used an industrial robot UR5e, and measurements of repeatability and accuracy of our own robotic system.
|