Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 05, 2019 - June 08, 2019
We describe a harvesting robot that grabs fruits and plucks them. To pluck the fruits, it is necessary to reproduce the skillful human hand motion of pulling while rotating. Furthermore, plucking motions vary greatly depending on conditions of the fruits and branches. We focus on the force from the branches and determine the conditions based on the ease of bending of the branch. In this study, the ease of bending is defined as the force from the branch per unit length when the gripped fruit is pulled down slightly. Moreover, using probabilistic learning and combining of plucking motions taught directly by a human, new motions are generated according to the ease of bending of the branch. Thus, plucking motions similar to that of a human hand can be generated according to the situation with fewer teachings. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by experiments.
