Direct Drive Brush-Shaped Tool with Torque Sensing Capability for Compliant Robotic Vine Suckering.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a direct drive brush-shaped tool developed for the use of robotic vine suckering. Direct drive design philosophy allows for precise and high bandwidth control of the torque exerted by the brush. Besides limiting the torque exerted onto the plant, this kind of design philosophy allows the brush to be used as a torque sensor. High bandwidth torque feedback from the tool is used to enable a position controlled robot arm to perform the suckering task without knowing the exact position and shape of the trunk of the vine. An experiment was conducted to investigate the dependency of the applied torque on the overlap between the brush and the obstacle. The results of the experiment indicate a quadratic relationship between torque and overlap. This quadratic function is estimated and used for compliant trunk shape following. A trunk shape following experiment demonstrates the utility of the presented tool to be used as a sensor for compliant robot arm control. The shape of the trunk is estimated by tracking the motion of the robot arm during the experiment.

Plant phenotyping relevance

ブドウ樹の幹形状をトルクセンサ付きロボット工具で推定する手法を開発・実験検証しており、植物形状の取得が中心的である。

Code and data availability

The paper's authors explicitly state that their implementation of the prioritized task-space control algorithm (used for the compliant trunk shape following experiments) is publicly available on GitHub. No phenotype/trait datasets or image/sensor data deposits are mentioned; the video link is supplementary footage of a