August 17, 2004
AgAnswers, an Ohio State Extension and Purdue Extension
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) considers farming a
matter of survival for future long-term space missions. Plants
provide food when deliveries from Earth aren't feasible and make
air breathable and water drinkable. But who will care for and
harvest crops when astronauts are so busy carrying out key
requirements to grow and harvest the crops must be reduced
through automation," said Peter Ling, an
Ohio State University Extension
specialist and a researcher with the Department of Food,
Agricultural, and Biological Engineering (FABE) on the Ohio
Agricultural Research and Development Center's (OARDC) Wooster,
NASA grant, Ling has led the effort to develop a robotic tomato
harvester for the J.F. Kennedy Space Center. The robot is able
to locate and pick ripe tomatoes -- one of the most delicate
fruits to harvest.
salad crop, having something live in a space station, is very
important for both nutritional and psychological reasons," Ling
said. "At the same time, automation is needed to save production
and harvesting time."
harvester includes a sensing unit and a robotic hand integrated
with a commercial robotic manipulator provided by Motoman Inc.,
West Carrollton, Ohio.
unit, or robotic eye, scans the tomato plant and determines the
number and position of red fruits. With this information, the
four-finger prosthetic hand moves in the direction of the fruit.
The fingers then open around the tomato and get a hold of it
before a pulling, bending or torsion movement is applied to
his team -- FABE scientists Reza Ehsani and K.C. Ting, design
engineer Mike Klingman, graduate students Nagarajan Ramalingam
and Yu-Tseh Chi, and Mettler-Toledo International designer Craig
Draper -- developed image-processing algorithms to determine
sizes and locations of mature tomatoes, including ones that are
partially obstructed by leaves or branches. They also improved a
previously designed robotic hand, which resulted in a 50 percent
harvester has been tested in the laboratory and in commercial
greenhouses in Ohio. Ling said success rates of fruit sensing
and picking were more than 95 percent and 85 percent,
respectively. The robot was demonstrated last March at the
Kennedy Space Center.
services of this space farmer are not restricted to future human
presence on Mars or the Moon. Ling said there's interest to
further develop this technology for use here on Earth.
looking into developing some kind of automation to harvest not
only tomatoes, but also apples and oranges," Ling explained.
"This technology can be advantageous, especially for the fresh
market, where you need to pick fruit one by one to get a mature,
greenhouse tomato growers have expressed interest in the robotic
harvester, Ling said. This technology also has caught the
attention of the citrus industry in Florida.
OSU Extension are part of Ohio State's College of Food,
Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.