Automatic fruit picking technology: a comprehensive review of research advances

Abstract

In recent years, the fruit industry has become an important part of agricultural development, and fruit harvesting is a key stage in the production process. However, picking fruits during the harvest season is always a major challenge. In order to solve the challenges of time-consuming, costly, and inefficient fruit picking, researchers have conducted a lot of studies on automatic fruit picking equipment. Existing picking technologies still require further research and development to improve efficiency and reduce fruit damage. Aiming at the efficient and non-destructive picking of fruits, this paper reviews machine vision and mechanical fruit picking technology and the current research status, including the current application status, equipment structure, working principle, picking process, and experimental results. As a promising tool, machine vision technology has been widely researched and applied due to its low hardware cost and rich visual information. With the development of science and technology, automated fruit picking technology integrates information technology, integrates automatic perception, transmission, control, and operation, etc., saves manpower costs, and continuously promotes the development of modern agriculture in the direction of refinement of equipment technology, automation, and intelligence. Finally, the challenges faced by automated fruit picking are discussed, and future development is looked forward to with a view to contributing to its sustainable development.