Development of Watermelon Harvesting Gripper

Abstract

A watermelon harvesting gripper for agricultural robot has been developed. To determine the specification of the gripper, the dimensions and mechanical characteristics of watermelon were investigated. The gripper has self-locking mechanism by friction force between finger and watermelon. Then, actuator to grasp a watermelon is not required. In this study the permissible position error and the contact stress between the finger of the gripper and a watermelon were measured indoors. As these results, it is confirmed that the gripper can harvest watermelon without damage at position error less than 40mm.