Autonomous Strawberry Harvesting Robot
Supervisor Name
Khalid Daghameen
Supervisor Email
dkhalid@ppu.edu
University
Palestine Polytechnic University
Research field
Computer Science
Bio
Khalid Daghameen is an academic and educator specializing in Computer Systems Engineering at Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU) in Palestine. His work involves teaching programming and object-oriented software development, designing academic assignments and assessment systems, and integrating digital tools such as Moodle into education. In addition to his academic career, he is involved in the aluminum manufacturing and trading business. His interests span software engineering, artificial intelligence, educational technology, and practical engineering applications.
Description
Strawberry harvesting is a labor-intensive agricultural process that requires careful han- dling to maintain fruit quality, but it increases production costs because it relies on manual labor. This project presents an Autonomous Strawberry Harvesting Robot designed to automate the main stages of strawberry harvesting with minimal human intervention. The proposed system integrates computer vision, artificial intelligence, stereo vision, au- tonomous navigation, robotic manipulation, transportation, and sorting within a single robotic platform. A Raspberry Pi 5 serves as the main processing and control unit, while two Arducam 12MP IMX708 HDR cameras provide visual information for strawberry de- tection and three-dimensional position estimation. The YOLOv8 Nano model detects ripe strawberries in real time, while stereo vision estimates their three-dimensional positions to guide the robotic arm toward the selected fruits. After harvesting, the robotic arm places the strawberries onto a conveyor belt, which transports them to the sorting mechanism. The system classifies strawberries according to size and visual quality and directs them to the appropriate collection basket. Load cells combined with HX711 amplifiers monitor basket weight and allow the system to detect when it reaches the predefined capacity. The robot also supports autonomous navigation along strawberry rows, row-end detec- tion, obstacle avoidance, and path safety validation. ROS2 is used as the middleware for communication between the main robotic subsystems. The proposed system aims to re- duce dependence on manual labor, improve harvesting efficiency, minimize fruit damage, and provide an affordable robotic solution suitable for precision agriculture. Keywords: Autonomous Strawberry Harvesting, Agricultural Robotics, Computer Vision, YOLOv8 Nano, Stereo Vision, Raspberry Pi 5, Robotic Arm, Autonomous Navi- gation, Strawberry Sorting.