Design and Field Evaluation of an End Effector for Robotic Strawberry Harvesting

As the world’s population continues to rise while the agricultural workforce declines, farmers are increasingly challenged to meet the growing food demand. Strawberries grown in the U.S. are especially threatened by such stipulations, as the cost of labor for such a delicate crop remains the bulk of the total production costs. Autonomous systems within the agricultural sector have enormous potential to catalyze the labor and land expansions required to meet the demands of feeding an increasing population, as well as heavily reducing the amount of food waste experienced in open fields. Our team is working to enhance robotic solutions for strawberry production, aiming to improve field processes and better replicate the efficiency of human workers. We propose a modular configuration that includes a Delta X parallel robot and a pneumatically powered end effector designed for precise strawberry harvesting. Our primary focus is on optimizing the design of the end effector and validating its high-speed actuation capabilities. The prototype of the presented end effector achieved high success rates of 94.74% in simulated environments and 100% in strawberry fields at Farias Farms, even when tasked to harvest in the densely covered conditions of the late growing season. Using an off-the-shelf robotic configuration, the system’s workspace has been validated as adequate for harvesting in a typical two-plant-per-row strawberry field, with the hardware itself being evaluated to harvest each strawberry in 2.8–3.8 s. This capability sets the stage for future enhancements, including the integration of the machine vision processes such that the system will identify and pick each strawberry within 5 s.