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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Stavros Vougioukas, Assistant Professor
Biological and Agricultural Engineering
UC Davis
Advanced Mechanization and Automation for Specialty
Crop Production
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
What decade was each machine built in?
1968 2008
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
One more typical example…
Courtesy of: Ernst Van Eeghen, Church Brothers/True Leaf Farms
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Mechanization for specialty crops –harvesting in particular - is lagging..
• Societal and political reasons Federal and state R&D funding had stopped for ~ 30 yrs.
• Economics Huge variety of crops demands custom solutions;
Fragmentation discourages private investment in R&D;
Labor has been cheap and available.
• Technical Fresh market fruits and vegetables:
o Must be harvested gently to look ‘perfect’ on the shelf;
o Must be often harvested selectively;
o Must be harvested efficiently and quickly.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
• Shake-catch causes unacceptable damage.
• Robotic fruit picking efficiency & throughput are low.
• Harvest-aids are often inefficient.
Can you tell the decade each machine was built?
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Current research projects
• Robot-aided harvesting.
• Virtual harvesting.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
• Manual harvesting
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Manualharves ng
Anexpensive,labor-intensiveopera onassociatedwith:
Non-produc vecrop-transport me
inexcessof20%.
Slippingaccidentsduringcroptransport.
Ergonomicsrelatedmusculoskeletaldisorders.
Manual harvesting
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Approach
Adopt and extend concepts from Flexible Manufacturing Systems.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Robot-aided harvesting: Project Goals
• Lay the scientific and technical foundation for teams of co-robots that:
Act as an intelligent courier service that transports harvested crops;
Reduce non-productive time;
Protect worker health by reducing slipping accidents;
Attend to harvesting ergonomics;
• Explore economic feasibility;
• Demonstrate prototype system in field conditions.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Jointangles
Posture
q Harves ngsystemstate(e.g.,workerposi ons,postures&bodymo ons;harvestedcrop)assessmentviawearableandrobotsensors.
• Worker positions, postures, body motions, and picking rate assessed via wearable and robot sensors.
Worker awareness
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Robot dispatching
• Minimize: Worker waiting times (efficiency);
Vibration & crop-transport time (postharvest quality);
Energy consumption (robot field-life).
• Constraints NIOSH regulated ergonomics variables
(e.g., maximum picking/stooping time);
Spatial conflicts (furrow access) and resource sharing (unloading stations).
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Virtual harvesting
Canning Peach Mechanization
Research Fund California Pear Advisory Board
Funded by:
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Can we build cost-effective fruit harvesting machines for existing tree architectures?
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
How do different training systems affect mechanized harvesting?
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
3D fruit-map (Bartlett pears)
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Methodology
17 17
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Estimated 3D fruit distribution
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Large Open-Vase Trees
Radial distance of fruits from trunk
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Harvesting Large Open-Vase Trees
• Robotic picking at high speed is ‘challenging’; Arms with reach of 8-10 ft would be too massive to be fast
enough;
Significant fruit-to-fruit travel;
Severe branch interference.
• How can we evaluate alternative designs?
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
High-density Trellised Trees (Bartlett pears)
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
High-density Trellised Trees (Bartlett pears)
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
High-density Trellised Trees (Bartlett pears)
• Robot arms with reach of ~ 3ft can be fast (1 cycle/s).
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Design Issues
• Could actuator arrays achieve high picking efficiency and speed?
• How many arms (~ 30k/arm)?
• How much do branches interfere?
• What types of arms?
• In what configuration?
• …
• How can we evaluate alternative designs?
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Machine
design Build
Field
Testing
Physical
machine
Breeding Cultivation/
training Physical
plants
Machine development process
• Relies heavily on field testing.
• Costly & slow.
• Funding usually runs out…
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Machine
design Build
Field
Testing
Physical
machine
Breeding Cultivation/
training Physical
plants
Model-based design
Model Virtual
Machine
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Virtual harvesting
Design tool
Machine & worker models
Tree geometries & orchard layout
3D fruit distributions
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Virtual harvesting
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Picking efficiency and throughput
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Machine
design Build
Field
Testing
Physical
machine
Breeding Cultivation/
training Physical
plants
What could the future bring?
Model Virtual
Machine
• Functional-structural plant models.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Thank you! Acknowledgements:
• Co-Pis
David Slaughter
Fadi Fathallah
Karen Klonsky
• Numerous California growers.
• Farm advisors:
Rachel Elkins, UCANR Extension, Lake and Mendocino Counties
Roger Duncan, UCANR Extension, Stanislaus County
Janine Hasey, UC Extension, Sutter & Yuba Counties
Chuck Ingels, UCANR Extension, Sacramento County
• Students:
Raj Rajkishan, Jason Wong, Farangis Khosro Anjom, Garren Lewis, Fransisco Jimenez.
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Biological and Agricultural Engineering
http://bae.engineering.ucdavis.edu