De-leafing apparatus for removing leaves of harvestable crops
AssigneeAutomated Harvesting Solutions, LLC
InventorAnthony Wisdom
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A harvester selectively harvests edible crowns ready for harvesting. The harvester may include an imaging system for capturing image(s) of the edible crowns and a de-leafing component that removes leaves of the broccoli plant. For example, broccoli plants typically have an abundance of leaves that reside beneath, alongside of, and even above the edible crowns. The leaves may conceal the edible crowns and impact a quality of the image(s). The de-leafing component may be positioned in front of the imaging system, relative to a direction of travel of the harvester, to remove the leaves and isolate or expose the edible crown. Therein, the imaging system may image the edible crowns for use in determining whether the edible crowns are ready for harvesting.
Claims21
(canceled)
A machine comprising:
- one or more imaging devices configured to capture images of edible crowns of plants;
- a robotic arm including an end effector;
- one or more processors;
- and
- one or more computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
- receiving, from the one or more imaging devices, image data associated with an edible crown,
- determining, based at least in part on the image data, one or more characteristics of the edible crown,
- generating, based at least in part on the one or more characteristics, a score representing a probability that the edible crown is ready for harvesting,
- determining that the score satisfies a threshold,
- determining, based at least in part on the score satisfying the threshold, that the edible crown is ready for harvesting,
- determining, based at least in part on the image data, a position of the edible crown,
- causing, based at least in part on determining that the edible crown is ready for harvesting, the end effector to move to the position of the edible crown,
- causing, while the machine is moving, the position of the end effector to be adjusted to compensate for movement of the machine, and
- causing the end effector to harvest the edible crown.
A method comprising:
- receiving, from one or more imaging devices, image data associated with an edible crown of a plant;
- determining, based at least in part on the image data, one or more characteristics of the edible crown;
- providing the image data as input to a trained machine-learning model;
- receiving, as output from the trained machine-learning model, a score representing a probability that the edible crown is ready for harvesting;
- determining, based at least in part on the score satisfying a threshold, that the edible crown is ready for harvesting;
- determining, based at least in part on the image data, a first position of the edible crown;
- determining, based at least in part on the first position of the edible crown and a speed associated with a harvester, a second position of the edible crown;
- causing a robotic arm including an end effector to move to the second position;
- and
- causing the end effector to harvest the edible crown.
One or more computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
- receiving image data associated with an edible portion of a plant within a field;
- analyzing the image data to determine that the edible portion is ready for harvesting;
- determining a position of the edible portion based at least in part on the image data and a speed of a harvesting machine;
- transmitting first instructions that cause an end effector to move based at least in part on the position of the edible portion and the speed of the harvesting machine;
- and
- transmitting second instructions to actuate a cutting mechanism of the end effector to sever the edible portion from a stalk.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.