It takes very, very smart technology to develop a de-leafing robot
The Komapo robot travels on tube rails down lanes in the greenhouse which is populated with tomato plants spaced at intervals on either side of the track. The robot is able to move from plant to plant sequentially and identify and remove leaves from each tomato. In order to identify the small green leafs that need to be removed among the other green leaves in the greenhouse, as well as being able to operate in various lighting conditions, Priva built the system with a pair of stereoscopic cameras.
"To enable each pair of stereo cameras to capture reliable images of the tomato plants regardless of the lighting conditions in the greenhouse, the system employs a Xenon strobe light which illuminates the plant. As the strobe emits light every two seconds, the strobe triggers the stereo cameras to expose images at 30 microsecond intervals. This enables the system to capture a uniform set of images each time," said Dr. Tomas de Boer, the Priva engineer responsible for the design of the system, in the article on Vision-Systems.com.
Priva's team is currently working with members of the tomato growing consortium in the Netherlands to finalize a pre-production prototype of the system. Depending on the number of robots that are ordered by the consortium, it will then become available for other tomato growers starting in June 2017.
Click here to read the complete article on the website of Vision-Systems.com