TY - GEN
T1 - A robotic prototype for spraying and pollinating date palm trees
AU - Shapiro, Amir
AU - Korkidi, Eran
AU - Rotenberg, Amit
AU - Furst, Gilad
AU - Namdar, Harel
AU - Sapir, Barak
AU - Mishkin, Maor
AU - Ben-Shahar, Ohad
AU - Edan, Yael
PY - 2009/9/21
Y1 - 2009/9/21
N2 - Spraying and pollinating date palm trees is currently done manually by a team of three workers from a platform lifted 18 meters or more above the ground. This method is extremely unsafe and many accidents have happened due to lack of stability when the platform is in a lifted position. Alternatively, date clusters are occasionally sprayed by a large pressurized sprayer directly from the ground, a method that is highly unselective and environmentally harmful, in this paper we present the concept of an automatic apparatus that can effectively and accurately spray and pollinate date clusters from a robotic apparatus mounted to a standard tractor operated by a single driver. The apparatus consists of a robotic arm and computer controlled sprayer, guided by a computer vision system that detects and localizes date clusters with a camera. This system will minimize risk of injury, significantly save manpower (from three to one person per team), and deliver the spray with maximum accuracy thereby reducing chemical disposure. A small scaled prototype has been built and is currently under preliminary experiments.
AB - Spraying and pollinating date palm trees is currently done manually by a team of three workers from a platform lifted 18 meters or more above the ground. This method is extremely unsafe and many accidents have happened due to lack of stability when the platform is in a lifted position. Alternatively, date clusters are occasionally sprayed by a large pressurized sprayer directly from the ground, a method that is highly unselective and environmentally harmful, in this paper we present the concept of an automatic apparatus that can effectively and accurately spray and pollinate date clusters from a robotic apparatus mounted to a standard tractor operated by a single driver. The apparatus consists of a robotic arm and computer controlled sprayer, guided by a computer vision system that detects and localizes date clusters with a camera. This system will minimize risk of injury, significantly save manpower (from three to one person per team), and deliver the spray with maximum accuracy thereby reducing chemical disposure. A small scaled prototype has been built and is currently under preliminary experiments.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70349142740&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:70349142740
SN - 9780791848364
T3 - 2008 Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Conference on Engineering Systems Design and Analysis
SP - 431
EP - 436
BT - 2008 Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Conference on Engineering Systems Design and Analysis
T2 - 2008 9th Biennial Conference on Engineering Systems Design and Analysis
Y2 - 7 July 2008 through 9 July 2008
ER -