Technology progress in mechanical harvest of fresh market apples

[Display omitted] •Reviewed fresh market apple harvest technologies of shake-and-catch, robotics, and platforms.•High-throughput and bruising-free catching mechanism needed for shake-and-catch commercialization.•Progress of sensing and automation technologies will help develop harvest robotics.•Harv...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers and electronics in agriculture 2020-08, Vol.175, p.105606, Article 105606
Main Authors: Zhang, Z., Igathinathane, C., Li, J., Cen, H., Lu, Y., Flores, P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Apple harvest
Apples
Bruising
Commercialization
Economic analysis
Embedded systems
Harvest-assist platform
Infield sorting
Machine learning
Mechanization
Platforms
R&D
Research & development
Robots
Shake-and-catch
Visibility
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[Display omitted] •Reviewed fresh market apple harvest technologies of shake-and-catch, robotics, and platforms.•High-throughput and bruising-free catching mechanism needed for shake-and-catch commercialization.•Progress of sensing and automation technologies will help develop harvest robotics.•Harvest platform, only technology adopted by growers, replaces ladder-and-bucket method.•More functions incorporated and improved economics enhance harvest platform adoption. This article reviews the research and development progress of mechanical harvest technologies for fresh market apples over the past decades with a focus on the predominant technologies of shake-and-catch, robots, and harvest-assist platform methods. In addition, based on the review it points out the bottlenecks and future trends of these three technology categories. Major progress in the shake-and-catch method is related to theoretical studies on the effective removal of apples and catching mechanisms to minimize bruising. The unacceptable bruising conditions hinder the shake-and-catch method from commercial application. Two startups of apple harvesting robots are in the stage of commercializing their products based on vacuum and three-finger end-effectors, respectively. Economic benefits, as well as technology reliability and robustness of both robots, are pending for validation before they are on the market. In addition, a key obstacle faced by both robots before commercial use is to find a solution to pick apples grown in clusters. Harvest-assist platforms are gradually adopted by apple growers, but at a very low rate due to their doubts on economic benefits. Validation of harvest-assist platforms’ economic benefits and incorporation with more functions (e.g., sorting) would enhance their adoption. With the rapid development of sensing and automation technologies, such as novel sensors, embedded systems, and machine learning algorithms, and the progress in new tree canopy structures that are friendlier for fruit visibility and accessibility, it is believed the robots for fresh market apple harvest would be realized and commercialized in the near future. Currently, more efforts should be invested in analyzing and validating the economic benefits of harvest-assist platforms, as well as adding more functions to the harvest-assist platforms, to increase their application rate for the benefit of the apple industry.
ISSN:0168-1699
1872-7107
DOI:10.1016/j.compag.2020.105606