An Overview of Perception Methods for Horticultural Robots: From Pollination to Harvest

TL;DR

This paper reviews perception methods in horticultural robotics, focusing on challenges and recent advances in sensing for pollination, yield estimation, and harvesting in complex outdoor environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current perception techniques and identifies key challenges and research directions in horticultural robotics.

Findings

Identification of major perception challenges in outdoor horticulture

Analysis of recent sensing and perception solutions for crop tasks

Highlighting promising research trends and future directions

Abstract

Horticultural enterprises are becoming more sophisticated as the range of the crops they target expands. Requirements for enhanced efficiency and productivity have driven the demand for automating on-field operations. However, various problems remain yet to be solved for their reliable, safe deployment in real-world scenarios. This paper examines major research trends and current challenges in horticultural robotics. Specifically, our work focuses on sensing and perception in the three main horticultural procedures: pollination, yield estimation, and harvesting. For each task, we expose major issues arising from the unstructured, cluttered, and rugged nature of field environments, including variable lighting conditions and difficulties in fruit-specific detection, and highlight promising contemporary studies.