Abstract
A watermelon harvesting robot, which has hydraulic manipulator to handle heavy matter, was developed. As watermelon is large and heavy, harvesting of watermelon is regarded as a suitable operation to estimate the performance of manipulator. Harvesting experiment on the farm was conducted using the harvesing robot. The positioning accuracy of manipulator, the success ratio to grasp fruit and bruises on the skin of fruit were measured and/or observed. As the result, even when there was 54.3mm of position error between gripper and fruit, the robot could harvest without bruises on the skin of fruit. The success ratio of harvesting by the robot was 65%.
