Abstrakt

Design and Fabrication of Coconut Harvesting Robot: COCOBOT

Mani A, Jothilingam A

This paper discusses the development and fabrication of a semi-autonomous tree climber and harvester (COCOBOT). Cocobot comprises of two mechanisms namely a climbing mechanism and a harvesting mechanism. The climbing mechanism consists of a octagon shaped chassis. Four active wheels are set at specific intervals around the tree of which one pair is for the upper side and the other for the lower side of the chassis. The main features of the climbing mechanism include the location of centre of mass of the cocobot outside the tree and the innovative climbing strategy fusing the straight and spiral climbs. The harvesting mechanism consists of an arm with three degree of freedom with a circular saw as an end effector. The bunch of nuts is located by a vision sensor (camera) which is placed at the wrist of the arm. The nuts are harvested using the saw based on the output received from the camera. The entire movement of the cocobot and the harvesting mechanism is controlled using remote controller.