Analysis and Design of an Auxiliary Catching Arm for an Apple Picking Robot

The newly designed 3-dimensional catching robot consists of three revolute joints where the forward linkage is a parallelogram mechanism for keeping the catching end-effector parallel to the picking manipulator’s base. A virtual apple field of 505 apples, designed to test the picking abilities of 7 DOF arm, was used to determine the capabilities of this new catching arm design. The target catching efficiency was 90% for the provided virtual apple field with a maximum drop height of 30 cm. The target coordinates for each virtual apple were found by computer simulation in MATLAB. Geometric parameters were selected such that the catching manipulator could reach every possible drop position in the picking manipulator’s workspace. The design was completed, fabricated, and validated, utilizing the elegant mechanical linkage design. The workspace analysis showed that it had an acceptable 93% catching efficiency, and as the drop height increased, the efficiency approaches 100%. Definitive inverse-kinematics provided exact joint angles required to catch all catchable apples inside of the workspace. Using these angles, the general equation of motion, using Lagrangian mechanics, yielded the required torque outputs of each of the three motors on the arm. Validation of these torques through laboratory experimentation was considered adequate.