YOLOv5 Model Application in Real-Time Robotic Eggplant Harvesting

Deep learning studies in agricultural automation have accelerated in recent years due to its benefits such as increasing product efficiency and reducing labor force. Deep learning is a powerful tool for automation in agriculture with applications ranging from disease identification and crop yield detection to fruit ripeness classification. It helps to automate various processes in agriculture and to perform time-consuming tasks in a shorter time. It quickly processes the data required for robotic harvesting systems and makes it available to the system. In this study, a machine learning study was carried out to be used in the robotic harvesting of eggplant fruit, which is a product that can take time to select and collect in the agricultural area where it is cultivated. YOLOv5 (nano-small-medium and large models) was used for the deep learning method. All training and test metric values of the models were analyzed. It was determined that the most successful model was the model trained with YOLOv5m algorithm on images of 640 × 640 size with 12 Batches and 110 Epochs. The results of the model values were analyzed as “metrics/precision”, “metrics/recall”, “metrics/mAP_0.5” and “metrics/mAP_0.5-0.95”. These are key metrics that measure the detection success of a model and indicate the performance of the relevant model on the verification dataset. It was determined that the metric data of the “YOLOv5 medium” model was higher compared to other models. The YOLOv5m model gave the highest score with F1 score of 85.66%, precision of 95.65%, recall of 96.15%, and mAP at 0.5-0.65 of 78.80%. Hence, it was understood that “Model 3” was the best detection model to be used in robotic eggplant harvesting to separate the eggplant from branch.