Title: Computer vision for fruit harvesting robots – state of the art and challenges ahead

Authors: Keren Kapach; Ehud Barnea; Rotem Mairon; Yael Edan; Ohad Ben-Shahar

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. ' Computer Science Department, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. ' Computer Science Department, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. ' Computer Science Department, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

Abstract: Despite extensive research conducted in machine vision for harvesting robots, practical success in this field of agrobotics is still limited. This article presents a comprehensive review of classical and state-of-the-art machine vision solutions employed in such systems, with special emphasis on the visual cues and machine vision algorithms used. We discuss the advantages and limitations of each approach and we examine these capacities in light of the challenges ahead. We conclude with suggested directions from the general computer vision literature which could assist our research community meet these challenges and bring us closer to the goal of practical selective fruit harvesting robots.

Keywords: agricultural computer vision; agrovision; agrobotics; fruit harvesting robots; robot vision; machine vision; visual cues.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCVR.2012.046419

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, 2012 Vol.3 No.1/2, pp.4 - 34

Published online: 04 Sep 2014 *

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