Apple detection dataset with visibility and deep learning detectionusing adaptive heatmap regression

In the fruit harvesting field, interest in automatic robot harvesting is increasing due to various seasonality and rising harvesting costs. Accurate apple detection is a difficult problem in complex orchard environments with changes in light, vibrations caused by wind, and occlusion of leaves and branches. In this paper, we introduce a dataset and an adaptive heatmap regression model that are advantageous for robot automatic apple harvesting. The apple dataset was labeled with not only the apple location but also the visibility. We propose a method to detect the center point of an apple using an adaptive heatmap regression model that adjusts the Gaussian shape according to visibility. The experimental results showed that the performance of the proposed method was applicable to apple harvesting robots, with MAP@K of 0.9809 and 0.9801 when K=5 and K=10, respectively.