Flower Interaction Subsystem for a Precision Pollination Robot

Robotic pollinators not only can aid farmers by providing more cost effective and stable methods for pollinating plants but also benefit crop production in environments not suitable for bees such as greenhouses, growth chambers, and in outer space. Robotic pollination requires a high degree of precision and autonomy but few systems have addressed both of these aspects in practice. In this paper, a fully autonomous robot is presented, capable of precise pollination of individual small flowers. Experimental results show that the proposed system is able to achieve a 93.1% detection accuracy and a 76.9% 'pollination' success rate tested with high-fidelity artificial flowers.

Design of an Autonomous Precision Pollination Robot

Precision robotic pollination systems can not only fill the gap of declining natural pollinators, but can also surpass them in efficiency and uniformity, helping to feed the fast-growing human population on Earth. This paper presents the design and ongoing development of an autonomous robot named "BrambleBee", which aims at pollinating bramble plants in a greenhouse environment. Partially inspired by the ecology and behavior of bees, BrambleBee employs state-of-the-art localization and mapping, visual perception, path planning, motion control, and manipulation techniques to create an efficient and robust autonomous pollination system.