IoT-Based Harvest Monitoring for Automated Fruit Picking Machine

Proponents:

Caro, Jannel P.
Dela Luna, Michelle E.
Robles, Mariton Angeli S.

Background of the Project

As of today most farmers still apply the manual methods of fruit harvesting. Unlike crops, some fruits
and vegetables cannot be directly harvested from the ground therefore manual hand-picking method is
used which takes a lot of time and effort to finish. The proponents of the project aims to provide a
machine that can be monitored through the internet which aims to solve the following issues:

Manual fruit/vegetable harvesting is very time consuming

Manpower is needed for manual harvesting
Manual fruit/vegetable picking is risky for the harvesters because of certain weather conditions
during harvest time
Monitoring of the number of harvested fruits relies on manual counting
Manual sorting of harvested fruits/vegetables

Objectives of the Project

To design an automated fruit/vegetable picking machine that will aid the farmers in harvesting
fruits/ vegetables saving more time and energy.
To develop a software application (PC and Android) that will keep track of the number of
harvested fruits/vegetables during harvest time through an online database
To design an automated sorter as a component of the fruit/vegetable picking machine to
automatically group the harvested fruits/vegetables having the same size and weight

Significance of the Project

This project will be significant not only to the farmers but also for the farm owners. The machine will be
assisting the farmers during the harvest time for a faster collection of fruits/vegetables while farm
owners will be able to monitor the number of harvested fruits anytime through an application.

Project Description

Hardware

The hardware part of the proposed project will utilize a planetary geared motor for the robotic arms
axial movement, load cell, servos, metal clamp claws, camera, and a stainless-steel frame. The camera
will serve as the eye of the picker in choosing which fruit to harvest and the servos, metal clamp claws,
and metal frame will be the parts of the robotic arm which the planetary geared motor will control. The
load cell will be the one responsible for sorting the harvested fruits/vegetables based on its weight. The
microcontroller unit that will be used in the proposed project is a Raspberry Pi.
Software

The software side of the project will utilize Adafruit IDE in programming the Raspberry Pi, Cloud SQL for
the online database, Visual Basic in developing the PC application for the machine and harvest
monitoring, and B4A for the for the android application development.

Block Diagram

Camera, Load Cell,

Raspberry Pi
Motor Gear, Servo

Online Database

PC / Android
Application