Fruit harvesting robots in Japan

We have developed harvesting robots for tomato /1/, petty-tomato, cucumber /2/ and grape /3/ in Japan. These robots mainly consist of manipulators, end-effectors, visual sensors and traveling devices. These mechanisms of the robot components were developed based on the physical properties of the work objects. The robots must work automatically by themselves in greenhouses or fields, since we are considering for one operator to tend several robots in the production system. The system is modeled after Japanese agriculture which is commonly seen to produce many kinds of crops in greenhouses and in many small fields intensively. Bioproduction in space is somewhat similar to the agricultural system in Japan, because few operators have to work in a small space. Employing robots for bioproduction in space is considered desirable in near future. The following is a description of the harvesting robots.