Vision based fruit recognition and positioning technology for harvesting robots

Fruit harvesting robot operations in unstructured agricultural environments have been facing both accuracy and speed challenges, and vision-based control plays an important role in autonomous harvesting. Visual recognition and harvest positioning technology determine whether the target information can be obtained quickly and accurately and whether fruit picking can be carried out efficiently and orderly. It includes not only the hardware platform technology of the vision system, but also different sensor technologies and the optimization of recognition and positioning algorithms. This paper reviews the application of vision recognition and harvesting localization technologies in fruit harvesting robots, starting with an overview of hardware platform technologies for different vision systems of robots, followed by an analysis of the development of target recognition and positioning technologies in terms of sensor hardware and algorithm design, respectively. In addition, the review discusses the difficulties and challenges encountered by robots in harvesting operations and describes the future trends of vision localization technologies.