Engineering Design Showcase
Team Detail
128: Watermelon Harvesting Robot
Team Members:
Colin Coope, Michael Acevedo, Thomas Nicosia, Katlego Matsipane
Sponsor: UD Plant & Soil Sciences: Yin Bao
Sponsor Description:
The Digital Agriculture Lab aims to develop innovative, practical cyber physical systems to advance digital agriculture. We leverage robotics, computer vision, proximal/remote sensing, and machine/deep learning to solve challenges faced by scientists and producers to accelerate discovery of foundational plant/animal knowledge and improve long-term profitability and sustainability of crop production, respectively.
Faculty Advisor: Yin Bao
Presentation Time: 11:30-12:00
Room #: Room 119
Project Goal Statement:
The goal of this project is to design, fabricate, and test an autonomous watermelon harvesting system that integrates machine vision, a compliant gripping end-effector, and a vine-cutting mechanism to detect, harvest, and transport melons in open-field conditions without damaging fruit. The system will be mounted on a Farm-ng Amiga ground robot and aims to demonstrate repeatable, efficient harvesting comparable to human workers while reducing labor dependence and minimizing yield loss.