flower interaction subsystem for a precision pollination robot

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1906.09294
• Publication Date: 2019-11-01
• Authors: Ryan M. Watson; Du Yixin; Christopher A. Ta...; Yu Gu; Kyle Lassak; Jennifer Nguyen; Benjamin Buzzo; Jared Strader; Nicholas Ohi; Henry Cerbone; Chizhao Yang
• Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; 2. Zero hunger; Computer Science - Robotics; 0209 industrial biotechnology; 02 engineering and technology; Robotics (cs.RO)

Robotic pollinators not only can aid farmers by providing more cost effective and stable methods for pollinating plants but also benefit crop production in environments not suitable for bees such as greenhouses, growth chambers, and in outer space. Robotic pollination requires a high degree of precision and autonomy but few systems have addressed both of these aspects in practice. In this paper, a fully autonomous robot is presented, capable of precise pollination of individual small flowers. Experimental results show that the proposed system is able to achieve a 93.1% detection accuracy and a 76.9% 'pollination' success rate tested with high-fidelity artificial flowers.<br/>Accepted for publication in 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2019), Macau, China<br/>