The project is collaborated with Vegetable Marketing Organisation, Controlled Environment Hydroponic Research and Development Centre. Since there is no insect in the Centre, the pollination work needs to be carefully done by the workers. Workers will use a cotton stick and precisely rotate it at the flower core according to the different statuses of the strawberry flowers. Because it takes place in a completely enclosed and dust-free environment, it requires lots of preparation before getting into the environment. The worker needs to clean their hand and equipment first, then wear a full protection cloth, shoes, dust cap. To increase the efficiency and decrease the labour force and cost of the operation, we developed an automated robot to solve the problem. The rail system will move the robot arm to the plant position and take a photo, then an AI program will recognize the strawberry flower’s status and position. After that, the robot arm will perform sphere searching to seek for good direction to do the task. Lastly, the robot arm will perform pollination simulating human-like hand motion.
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