Abstract
Food production faces difficulties, such as poor harvests due to abnormal weather and food shortages due to population growth. One effective solution for these problems is the "vertical farm". However, it is difficult to realize the vertical farm because currently only leaf vegetables are available in commercial production. Therefore, it is necessary to automate the fruit vegetable cultivation for the realization of the vertical farm. In this study, we study automation and mechanization of tomato cultivation, especially focus on the hormone treatment. This paper proposes a hormone treatment end-effector, consists of an auto-focus stereo camera, a hormone spray arm and an angle control mechanism, for a robot which is able to estimate a 3D position of tomato flower by using the Kanatani and Kanazawa Algorithm. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the hormone treatment system.
