Lavor saving of the vegetable farming by use of robot

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The purpose of this research is to automate the farming of leafy vegetables in the field by applying a flexible intelligent robot which can recognize the crop.A three-dimensional vision sensor was made for trial purposes to measure the three-dimensional shape of the crop. Recognition of the mature crisp head lettuce was tried by processing the three-dimensional shape measured with the sensor. The three-dimensional shape of the lettuce could be measured under the sun light of the outdoors and also under the indoor condition. The characteristics of the three-dimensional shape of the mature lettuce were discussed. The height of the mature lettuce head was comparatively high, the undulations were small. The height of the immature lettuce was relatively low, and the undulations were large. The position of the mature lettuce was able to be recognized by using such characteristics.The quality judgment of the seedling was tried by the image processing with a color video camera to automate the transplanting, and the judging performance was clarified.The traveling unit, the manipulator, the hand, and the three-dimensional vision sensor were combined and a lettuce selective harvesting robot was made for trial purposes. Fundamental experiments were done to investigate the performance of each component of the robot at the current year, and the expected performance was obtained.To make the robot a multi-function one, the transplanting of the cell molded seedling and the harvesting of leafy vegetables such as spinach were attempted on addition to the selective lettuce harvesting work. The cell molded seedling could be transplanted by a transplanting hand. Such leafy vegetables were harvested by a harvesting hand consisted of soft conveyer belts by pulling the vegetables.