A tomato harvesting robot to work in large scale greenhouse has been studied by our research group. This robot harvested a fruit by bending its stem instead of by cutting the stem. Some fruits without calyx were harvested by the robot, although tomato fruit with calyx for fresh market are sold in Japan. To solve this problem, in this study, a harvesting end-effector was improved to harvest a fruit with calyx.

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The autonomous driving unit using the regression reflective type laser sensor and the laser range sensor has been developed aiming at automation and robotization of various work in the intelligent greenhouse (harvesting and pest control) and plant diagnosis information measurement. Some study cases of on-board equipped system of harvesting, pest control and plant diagnosis information measurement are reported.

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We are currently developing a strawberry-harvesting robot which includes machine vision, five-axis manipulator, end-effector and fluit-tray-exchanger. Because the working hours are limited, the density of berries is very important for harvesting robot. So we try to sort berries by density. In this paper, the way of density and the results of experiment are shown in detail.

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The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications promoted the creation of the business using mobile telephones in July, 2009. The business has developed in four places including Fukuoka Prefecture Itoshima City. Fukuoka Prefecture Itoshima City has developed the "e-Neco Green House business". The "e-Neco Green House" can operate sensors and devices of the house from the remote place. In this study, we have researched and developed the temperature management system in the house of "e-Neco green House business". In this particular, we have developed the machine that can open and close the skylight in the House to adjust a temperature.

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Recognition of target plants is one of important problem for harvesting robot. Many harvesting robots have TV camera type sensor for recognition of target plants. But, It is difficult to use TV camera in day time, because of light disturbance is seriousness from sun light. Therefore, we developed recognition sensor system using laser range finder that can used day and night. We adapt laser range finder sensor system for a power cable type asparagus harvesting robot. Using our sensor system, a power cable type asparagus harvesting robot can work continuously in day and night time.

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Small-flowered chrysanthemums are a major type of cut flower used in Japan for which we are developing flowering stage inspection equipment. This equipment can correctly determine whether it is appropriate for shipping as same as the expert in the case of parameters for the classification is set properly. However, classification parameters depend on breed, season, distance to consumers, and days allowed for shipping, and the expert must find the proper parameters in practical use. We studied the automatic acquisition method about the classification parameters using several appropriate and inappropriate learning samples. We introduce this method and the results of evaluation experiments.

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Saffron pistils are normally harvested by hand. As the amount of pistils obtained from one flower is very small, harvesting them a certain amount requires a hard task. In this paper, we discuss a system to automate harvesting saffron pistil using robot equipped with image processing unit. We introduce a mechanism and a task movement of the robot, and examine technique to detect cutting point and gripping point which are necessary for harvesting by image processing, and proposes a process to harvest based on it.

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Fruit detection in the orchard under natural lighting condition is still a challenging task. This paper presents a study of image processing using local features to detect individual pear in the field under natural lighting condition. An RGB-Near infrared (NIR) camera was used to take high contrast images using reflectance difference between the fruit and the leaf. A two-stage approach was investigated to detect fruits. In the first stage, the Haar-like feature was applied to detect interesting regions. The second stage, the Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) was used to detect fruits. We demonstrate that we can obtain higher detection accuracy than single stage approach.

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For the growth environment management of agricultural crops, our objective is to invent a high-accuracy position detection method using the information and communication technology. In this paper, our detection target objects are potted roses in the outdoor plane of about 20m x 10m. Each pot is arranged to about 50cm apart and has a semi-passive RFID tag. All pots are covered by a long range RFID system which has at least two reader antennae. The reader antenna which is designed to rotate around vertical axis can precisely detect the angle of arrival of each tag. So, the tag position is calculated with the crossing point of angles from two antennae. Thus, with two scanning antennae, 25cm-accuracy position detection was achieved.

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The number of farmers is decreasing and the average age is increasing. The development of autonomous vehicles in an orchard is required because an orchard is usually on a hill or mountain where it is very tough for farmers to work. In this research a new control method is proposed for an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) by using image-based control with a central catadioptric camera. A central catadioptric camera is very effective since it can make a target keep in the field of vision of camera. The effectiveness of our proposed method is confirmed by experiments.

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We propose an organic cultural method for paddy fields in hilly and mountainous areas. In this method, a small rover (AIGAMO ROBOT) does the weeding by running in the paddy and stirring the soil. And now, we are developing a autonomous drive control system for the robot to reduce farmer's labor load. This paper describes the outline of development and experiment on the robot.

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Growing garden products involves a lot of work, such as harvesting, which is difficult to mechanize. Garden product crops require longer working hour compared with rice. We are developing a robot performing soil sterilization aimed at preventing repeated cultivation disorder. This robot is a medicinal solution injection robot injecting chloropicrin to use for soil sterilization automatically. The developed robot is driven by oil pressure actuators, runs on crawlers, with an chemical injector mounted in front of the robot. The robot is equipped with a triangular surveying sensor. The robot covers entire working soil area with a combination of straight lines and arcs along which the position and orientation of the robot is compensated by the output from the sensor. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate that the robot can navigate on the uneven and soft terrain within required position errors.

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We investigated the cutting weeds picking up and packing robot used in the slope. The rotation shaft of the packing room leans when an existent machine is used in the slope. The rotation shaft of the packing room leans when an existent machine is used in the slope. Weeds lean to one side of the packing room in these machines because of this inclination. Therefore, the robot that the rotation shaft of the packing room always became horizontal was developed. This robot consisted mainly of a weeds picking up device which carries the short cutting grass with the brush and the blower by the wind, a roll baler which improved the direction of the rotation shaft of the packing room, engines and controller. Then, the system to prove it in the flood plain was manufactured as an experiment. When this robot was tested in the slope, 90% of the grass was collected, and it could be packed.

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We propose a method of shaft tillage cultivation using an autonomous robot and discuss the possibility of introducing legged locomotion in our robot. One of the advantages of legged locomotion is the ability it offers in selecting the ground contact points. Since the tillage and transplanting site is managed as point coordinates in shaft tillage cultivation, the compatibility between the leg locomotion and the shaft tillage method is high. This paper treats the locomotion of the five-legged robot for shaft tillage cultivation. The five-legged robot discovers its ground position based on a cultivation plan. We report about the computer simulation where the robot moves about to do various work based on the plan.

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This paper proposes a new estimation method based on a neural network modeling using dynamic texture features extracted from ultrasound image to estimate Beef Marbling Standard (BMS) number accurately. The correlation coefficient between estimated and actual BMS numbers was r=0.75(P<0.01) by leave-one-out method using dynamic texture features. This result showed that dynamic texture features extracted from dynamic image were effective in the accurate estimation of BMS number.

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In the transportation work of construction materials at high-raise building, the hung load such large steel beam and pre-cast concrete panels are frequently rotated by the wind pressure and by the inertia power accompanied with movement of crane. For the purpose of suppressing the load rotation, a high power control device installed with gyroscope was developed to improve the past developed device greatly. The main improvement points are as follows, the design of gyroscopic mechanism to generate high power moment, the body design fed bake the wind analysis, the development of energy conservation circuit of gyroscopic motor and inverter, the introduce of operation system that considered safety and smartness. As result of these improvements and developments, the construction materials could be kept initial position against outer disturbance using the inverse moments passively and the loads were turned at the desired angle of setting position collectedly controlling the moment activity. Moreover, the successive operating time was progressed very long in spite of only a battery charge. Applying this device to transportation works, the effective and smooth operations lifting and setting of the materials are performed at a construction site.

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An experiment for 3D measurement was tried in a road-tunnel under construction by "three-dimensional measurement mobile unit" that was produced experimentally, this time. This system has two modes for measurement. One is the measurement mode when the speed is required; the other is a measurement mode when the accuracy is required. Measurement experiments by each mode were tried, and the results were considered. In addition, the demonstration about the real-time display was performed. And, an assessment of differences from design data in calculation results was made.

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Authors are developing the concrete column inspection and repair system. The system is for the extermination of work at the height place, and the safety work, and the shortening time of construction, and the corresponding to the serious disaster. This system is climbing the concrete column for inspection and repairing by self-climbs and remote control. This report explains the performance of the concrete column inspection and repair system is a climbing evaluated by the climbing experiment.

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A method of scooping rock piles automatically by wheel loader has been proposed until now. The reaction forces from rock piles are composed of five components, and the combination of the components acting on the bucket changes according to the bucket trajectories. In this research the cutting force among five components is formulated and it is verified by a fundamental experiment with a mechanical simulator. Then, the relationship between scooping motions and scooped amounts are examined.

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This paper reports a practical framework for measuring the external force vector applied to a construction manipulator using hydraulic sensors. Such a measuring system inevitably includes measuring errors owing to difficult-to-reduce modeling errors, so our framework introduces relative measuring accuracy improvement. It is organized into (i) quantifying internal error range (IER) using the summation of the maximum measuring error of static and dynamic friction forces, (ii) calculating error force vectors using IER to select cylinders with less errors, and (iii) outputting the external force vector using the selected cylinders. Experiments were conducted using an instrumented hydraulic arm. Results indicate that our framework enables to improve the relative measuring accuracy, independently of various postural and kinematic conditions.

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The new master-slave control method with different configuration which will suit a hydraulic excavator is presented. The authors introduced the new coordinate conversion method between master and slave manipulators. This method provides the good agreements of moving directions between master and slave manipulators in the almost entire work area without any mode changes. The authors also developed the 3-dimensional joystick lever as a master manipulator which yields an affinity with a conventional joystick lever and gives the comfortable feeling to conservative operators. In this paper, the outline of the new method is described and the results of the evaluation tests are presented.

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This paper describes a software which assists to crush rocks for the operator in the primary crushing room at limestone mine. This software has functions which detects objected rocks to crush by an image processing. In order to detect these objected rocks to crush, we devised that a detection method using the features of the classified rocks which need to crush. We constructed the software using the detection method. We evaluated the constructed software which implemented the method by experiment.

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The rest room in the highway service area occupies a large space and requires cleaning at regular intervals throughout the day, 24 hours. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find required number of cleaning staffs, particularly for cleaning during the night. Moreover, today's rest room is more sophisticated and has many more facilities than before, and demand for higher and better cleaning quality is strong. In this paper, we present a small cleaning robot for the rest room. The robot automatically cleans the floor by two cleaning methods: dry, vacuum cleaning for small trash, dust, and hairs, and wet, mopping cleaning for dirt and stains. The robot was tested in the actual rest room environment, and results show that it was effecitive and efficient for automating cleaning tasks in the rest room.

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We developed compact type Cleaning Robot. The robot cleans office area and conference room. In General, office area is larger than passage and elevator hall in office building. So there is requirement of autonomous cleaning system in office area. Office area is shape, and is often moved desks and cabinets. The robot equip triangular surveying sensor, and run automatically by recognize self position with use of triangular surveying and reflectors. By the report, we show the concept of the robot.

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