Tissue culture involves the regeneration of plants from very small plants, tissues, or cells grown aseptically in a suitable environmemt.
A robot system has been developed to automate the cultivation of shoot tips. An image processing technique is used to decide where to cut a shoot. The procedure for the selection of the cutting points includes taking an image of a shoot, binalizing the image, deciding a search area where a joint exists, and deciding the cutting points. A robotic hand which cuts a shoot at two cutting points simultaneously and grasps the shoot without destroying it is developed. An applicative experiment using carnations is made to demonstrate the effectiveness of the robot system.
