Development of a Robot for Spraying a Fruit-set Reagent in a Tomato Cultivation System with Low Node-order Pinching and High Density Planting (Part 1)

——Recognition of Flowers by Image Processing and the Development of a Reagent-spraying Unit——

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a fruit-set-reagent spraying robot. The experimental robot comprises a manipulator with three degrees of freedom, a machine vision system, an LED light, a spray unit, and a control unit. The robot can operate at night. The number of flowers was estimated with the petal size. Plants with three or more flowers are at the optimal stage for fruit set, and were detected successfully 93% of the time when flower clusters were directed toward the camera. The fruit-set rate did not differ between manual spraying and robot spraying under these conditions. When flower clusters were hidden by the main stem, the fruit set rate was lower for the robot sprayer.