How do you enable a robot to harvest tomatoes in an environment that is constantly changing? Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is exploring how simulation can accelerate and refine the development of harvesting robots for greenhouse horticulture. Researchers are building a simulated greenhouse environment in which robots and tomato plants interact realistically.
Testing robots in greenhouse horticulture is complex in practice. Plants grow, conditions shift, and each harvest permanently alters the situation. As a result, tests are difficult to repeat under identical conditions. WUR is therefore developing a simulation environment that digitally replicates this dynamic setting, allowing robot design and control systems to be tested in a systematic and repeatable way.“Robot simulation is quite common in controlled environments such as car factories, but in greenhouse horticulture this is genuinely new,” says Arjan Vroegop, researcher at WUR and project leader within the Vision+Roboticsteam. “Here, you are dealing with living plants and significant natural variation. That makes simulation much more complex.”Read full story from HortiDaily.com…
