# Autonomous Sweet Pepper Harvesting for Protected Cropping Systems

## TL;DR

This paper introduces Harvey, a robotic system capable of autonomously harvesting sweet peppers in protected cropping environments, combining vision algorithms and a novel end-effector to improve success rates.

## Contribution

The paper presents a new robotic harvester with integrated vision and end-effector design tailored for sweet pepper harvesting in protected cropping systems.

## Key findings

- 46% success rate for unmodified crop
- 58% success rate for modified crop
- 90% detachment rate for favorable cultivar

## Abstract

In this letter, we present a new robotic harvester (Harvey) that can autonomously harvest sweet pepper in protected cropping environments. Our approach combines effective vision algorithms with a novel end-effector design to enable successful harvesting of sweet peppers. Initial field trials in protected cropping environments, with two cultivar, demonstrate the efficacy of this approach achieving a 46% success rate for unmodified crop, and 58% for modified crop. Furthermore, for the more favourable cultivar we were also able to detach 90% of sweet peppers, indicating that improvements in the grasping success rate would result in greatly improved harvesting performance.