Robot arm learns to prune and pick fruit trees
Pruning
The gnarled apple tree in your backyard that takes a professional pruner years of trained eye to shape correctly could someday be tended by a robot that scans its branches and learns pruning rules from expert cuts.
Scientists are teaching robots to do two of the hardest jobs in growing apples and pears: pruning branches in winter and picking fruit at harvest. They built a robotic arm on a mobile platform, scanned over 3,200 trees to build one of the world's largest tree-branch datasets, and taught the system to recognize where expert pruners cut. The robot pruned with 92% success at under 9 seconds per cut, and picked pears and apples with 68% and 76% success respectively, though it still needs more work before it pays for itself on a real farm.
Key Findings
The robotic pruning arm achieved 92% success at a speed of 8.9 seconds per cut, a 27% improvement in success rate and 28% faster cycle time over the first prototype
A dataset of over 3,200 winter-dormant tree scans (point cloud and RGB) was created, one of the largest of its kind, with pruning actions digitized at an 82.2% F1-score match to expert pruners
Preliminary harvesting tests reached 68% success for pears and 76% for apples, and a combined pruning-plus-harvesting robotic platform was projected to break even economically after about 8.4 years
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers built a robotic arm system that can prune and harvest apples and pears in orchards, using 3D scans and AI to understand tree branch structure, and found it could become profitable within about 8 years if used for both tasks.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Geautomatiseerde objectmanipulatie in hardfruitboomgaarden – Robotisch snoeien en oogsten
Growing pome fruit requires knowledge of the tree and its circumstances. Throughout the year, experienced cultivators manage the orchard in various ways, including certain manipulations in the tree...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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