IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jagris/v12y2022i8p1175-d882512.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Multi-Flexible-Fingered Roller Pineapple Harvesting Mechanism

Author

Listed:
  • Tianhu Liu

    (College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China)

  • Wei Liu

    (College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China)

  • Tingjun Zeng

    (School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, 381 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510640, China)

  • Yifeng Cheng

    (College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China)

  • Yan Zheng

    (College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China)

  • Jian Qiu

    (College of Engineering, South China Agricultural University, 483 Wushan Road, Guangzhou 510642, China)

Abstract

Research on the mechanical harvesting of pineapples is currently in its early stages. The purpose of this study is to provide a design and configure a method for multi-flexible-fingered roller pineapple harvester. Depending on the physical and mechanical characteristics of pineapples, the evaluation function for the critical damage condition of the fruit was established. Our experimental results revealed the optimal parameters for pineapple harvesting were as follows: the rollers of the harvesting mechanism should be inclined at 35°, the left flexible fingers should be 120 mm long, the gap between each of the left flexible fingers should be 30 mm, the length of the right flexible fingers should be 150 mm long, and the gap between each of the right flexible fingers should be 10 mm. The harvesting rate was 85% and the damage rate was 5% in the laboratory; in the natural environment, harvesting rate and damage rate were 78% and 8% respectively, and the harvesting speed was about 1 s per fruit, which demonstrated the harvesting machinery could sufficiently meet the usage demand of pineapple harvesting. In the cases of unsuccessful harvesting, failure resulted from mismatched flexible finger length, fruit size, and harvesting posture and position.

Suggested Citation

  • Tianhu Liu & Wei Liu & Tingjun Zeng & Yifeng Cheng & Yan Zheng & Jian Qiu, 2022. "A Multi-Flexible-Fingered Roller Pineapple Harvesting Mechanism," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-19, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:8:p:1175-:d:882512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/8/1175/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/8/1175/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:8:p:1175-:d:882512. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.