DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT ROBOTIC HARVESTING SYSTEM
Zalimkhan Nagoev, O.Z. Zagazezheva, K.C. Brzhikhatlov, Idar Mambetov · Известия Южного федерального университета. Технические науки · 2025
In the context of the need to ensure food security, the tasks of optimizing production processes in theagricultural sector are becoming relevant. For example, given the shortage of labor in agriculture, it isnecessary to develop and implement robotic systems to automate the processes of plant care, harvestingand processing. The article presents the results of the development of an autonomous robot for pickingapples, created on the basis of a universal anthropomorphic robot developed at the Kabardino-BalkarianScientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The robot is equipped with two multi-link manipulatorssimilar to human hands, which allows it to perform complex harvesting tasks. To ensure intelligentcontrol of the entire system, a multi-agent neurocognitive architecture is used, which imitates the work ofthe human brain and allows the robot to adapt to changing environmental conditions. The robot isequipped with a set of sensors, including video cameras, ultrasonic and infrared rangefinders, lidar andencoders on the manipulator drives. This allows it to accurately determine the location of apples, assesstheir ripeness and plan the trajectory of the manipulators. Particular attention is paid to the developmentof a gripper that imitates a human hand and allows you to adjust the squeezing force, which minimizes therisk of damage to the fruit. A multi-agent neurocognitive architecture is used to control the robot, whichprovides autonomous decision-making based on sensor data. The system is able to build a map of the area,determine the position of the robot and plan a route, as well as recognize apples and assess their condition.The article also considers the problems associated with the automation of harvesting in agriculture,including a lack of labor and crop losses due to improper operation of equipment. The authors emphasizethat automation and robotization of harvesting processes have great potential, especially for cropsthat require an individual approach, such as fruits and vegetables. The presented robot demonstrates highefficiency in solving these problems, which is confirmed by the results of field tests. The developed systemcan be adapted to work with other crops, which makes it a universal solution for the agricultural industry