Last month saw the Sweeper team perform tests with their harvest robot in the greenhouse of partner Research Station for vegetable production at Sint Katelijne-Waver in Belgium. The data of the tests will be used for improving the vision algorithms for detecting ripe fruits and approach path of the robot.
The goal of the Sweeper project is to develop a robotic harvesting system for sweet peppers (www.sweeper-robot.eu). Several international partners are working on the project, each with its own expertise. Wageningen University & Research is mainly responsible for testing and improving the robot, both hardware and software. Research Station for Vegetable Production at Sint Katelijne-Waver, performs research within Sweeper for adaption of the growing system for automatic harvest.
Data gathered will be used to improve the maturity detection and increase the robustness of it whilst also improving reachability – how the robot should approach the fruit to reach it without damage.