Back to results
US 12,096,733 B2Granted
Robotic fruit picking system
AssigneeDogtooth Technologies Limited
InventorsDuncan Robertson, Matthew Cook, Edward Herbert, Frank Tully
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeDogtooth Technologies Limited
InventorsDuncan Robertson, Matthew Cook, Edward Herbert, Frank Tully
Estimating the term…
A robotic fruit picking system includes an autonomous robot that includes a positioning subsystem that enables autonomous positioning of the robot using a computer vision guidance system. The robot also includes at least one picking arm and at least one picking head, or other type of end effector, mounted on each picking arm to either cut a stem or branch for a specific fruit or bunch of fruits or pluck that fruit or bunch. A computer vision subsystem analyses images of the fruit to be picked or stored and a control subsystem is programmed with or learns picking strategies using machine learning techniques. A quality control (QC) subsystem monitors the quality of fruit and grades that fruit according to size and/or quality. The robot has a storage subsystem for storing fruit in containers for storage or transportation, or in punnets for retail.
A robotic fruit picking system in which the robot automatically navigates along rows of fruit-producing plants grown on table-top systems, and in which the fruit picking system includes a computer vision system that includes a camera and that is configured to detect one or more features of the table top systems in order to determine the position and/or orientation of the camera with respect to a coordinate system defined by the features of the table-top systems, such that the fruit picking system is configured to automatically determine its position and/or orientation with respect to the rows of fruit producing plants.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.