Horticultural tasks such as pruning and selective harvesting are labor intensive and horticultural staff are hard to find. Automating these tasks is challenging due to the semi-structured greenhouse workspaces, changing environmental conditions such as lighting, dense plant growth with many occlusions, and the need for gentle manipulation of non-rigid plant organs. In this work, we present the three-armed system HortiBot, with two arms for manipulation and a third arm as an articulated head for active perception using stereo cameras. Its perception system detects not only peppers, but also peduncles and stems in real time, and performs online data association to build a world model of pepper plants. Collision-aware online trajectory generation allows all three arms to safely track their respective targets for observation, grasping, and cutting. We integrated perception and manipulation to perform selective harvesting of peppers and evaluated the system in lab experiments. Using active perception coupled with end-effector force torque sensing for compliant manipulation, HortiBot achieves high success rates.

翻译：园艺任务如修剪和选择性采摘劳动强度大，且园艺工人难以招募。由于温室工作区域半结构化、光照等环境条件变化、密集植物生长导致大量遮挡，以及对非刚性植物器官需进行轻柔操作，自动化这些任务充满挑战。本文提出三臂系统HortiBot，其中两臂用于操作，第三臂作为铰接式头部，通过立体相机实现主动感知。其感知系统不仅可实时检测辣椒，还能识别果梗和茎干，并通过在线数据关联构建辣椒植株的世界模型。具备碰撞感知的在线轨迹生成使三个臂能够安全地追踪各自目标，以进行观察、抓取和切割。我们整合感知与操作模块实现辣椒选择性采摘，并在实验室实验中评估系统性能。通过结合主动感知与末端力/力矩传感器进行柔顺操作，HortiBot达到了高成功率。