Abstract
To remove weeds around a grape vine without damaging the stem, we propose a contact recognition technology in this paper. The developed technique can reliably determine the position of the vine's lower stem, which may be deformed under sufficient force and may be buried in the weeds. We have developed a new method to detect the position of grape stems as objects in which its deformation is considered. By calculating the deformation from the relations between the geometry and mechanics of manipulator's link postures before and after contact point detection, the position of the object can be determined with high accuracy. Because stem position detection commences after tactile recognition has been performed, any deformation of the object has already occurred. The effect of this initial deformation on the detection accuracy cannot be ignored. Therefore, position detection of object is divided into two operations : reducing the object deformation and detecting the object position. In this way, highly accurate recognition of its position is achieved. The paper continues by giving a detailed explanation of the proposed method.
