Holographic-based design, building, and testing of an RRP spherical robot for olive fruits harvesting

Abstract

A revolute-revolute-prismatic (RRP) spherical robot has been designed, simulated, built, and tested. The robot is intended to perform olive fruit harvesting tasks. The design simulation is done using hologram tools. The design factors considered include reach, dexterity, accuracy, and productivity. Based on the results of the holographic simulation, a prototype was built and tested on real olive fruits. The end effector is equipped with a rake tool so that the robot can harvest multiple fruits in each stroke. The robot is controlled by Raspberry Pi while a stereovision camera enables 3-D vision. Once the camera detects the fruits, an inverse kinematics algorithm is initiated to find the location of the fruits. The fruit coordinates are commanded to the manipulator to perform the harvesting. The field tests showed that the manipulator is successful in performing the harvesting operations. To increase the harvesting efficiency, it is recommended to build a larger prototype.