NL: Robot arm prototype tested on sweet pepper

Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture, nased in Wageningen, the Netherlands is testing a prototype of a robot arm on sweet-pepper. The robot is an intermediate result of the European FP7 project Clever robots for crops, CROPS, which is coordinated by Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture. In the project fourteen partners from ten countries are participating.

During the first 18 months of the project the European projects partners settled the requirements for such a system and developed and tested modules for this prototype. These modules have now been put together in Wageningen.

The robot manipulator is designed to grip and to cut the ripe fruits from the plants and to transport them to a container.

International co-operation
The main hardware piece, the robotic arm, was developed by the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Jentjens Machinetechniek, Veghel, (The Netherlands) has built a carrier platform to transport the manipulator through the greenhouse. Festo (Germany) developed a special gripper to be able to grip sweet-pepper fruits. Under the lead of the Department of Computer Science of Umea University (Sweden) the first control software was assembled in a joint effort. The next steps are the performance of tests with the system in the real environment and the integration of sensors and intelligence for fruit and obstacle detection and localisation.

CROPS focuses on the development of new techniques for sensors, robot arms, grippers and intelligence, to be deployed in various agricultural applications.

For more information please visit www.crops-robots.eu