3D Vision Assisted Robotic Harvesting of Broccoli

迫切需要降低田间芸苔属作物特别是西兰花的生产成本。劳动力成本在整个生产成本中占很大比例。高劳动力使用率也会导致复杂的管理和潜在的社会问题。在这个项目中，我们将测试低成本的商业3D相机技术是否可以用于识别和选择准备在商业作物中收获的西兰花。这将为开发全自动和摄像头引导的西兰花机器人收获系统提供关键的基础步骤。商业效益非常显著，因为西兰花作物是世界上最大的蔬菜作物之一，几乎所有的西兰花都是人工收获的。

There is an urgent need to reduce the costs of production of field brassica crops, in particular broccoli. Labour costs are a significant proportion of overall production costs. High labour usage also drives complex management and potentially social issues. In this project we will test whether low-cost commercial 3D camera technology can be used to identify and select broccoli which are ready to harvest within commercial crops. This will provide a key underpinning step towards the development of a fully automatic and camera guided robotic harvesting system for broccoli. The commercial benefits are highly significant, as the broccoli crop is one of the worlds largest vegetable crops, and almost all of it is manually harvested.