SHIVAA

Strawberry Harvester: an Innovative Vehicle for Application in Agriculture


Photo of the SHIVAA robot (Photo: Annemarie Popp, DFKI GmbH)
Photo of the SHIVAA robot (Photo: Annemarie Popp, DFKI GmbH)

Technical Details

Size: 245 x 120 x 100 cm
Weight: 150 kg
Power supply:
48V Li-Ion batteries, 2x 29 Ah
Speed: 6 km/h
Actuation/ Engine:
4 BLDC wheel motors
2 steering motors
12 BLDC direct drives for arm and conveyor belt actuation
Pneumatic actuation of grippers
Sensors:
stereocamera for lane following
multispectral camera for detection and classification of strawberries
IMU/GPS for localisation of the robot in the field
Absolut Encoder in all drive units
Communication:
CAN
LVDS

Organisational Details

Partner:

HAW Hamburg – FTZ Smart Systems
Othmerding Maschinenbau GmbH & Co.KG
Erdbeerhof Glantz (assoziierter Partner)

Sponsor: Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft
Grant number: The project is supported by funds of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) provides coordinating support for artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture as funding organisation, grant number 28DK103A20.
Application Field: Agricultural Robotics

System description

Rendering of the full system (Photo: Heiner Peters, DFKI GmbH)
Photo of the SHIVAA robot (Photo: Mahdi Javadi, DFKI GmbH)

The robot SHIVAA is being developed for the fully autonomous harvesting of strawberries grown in open field.

Positioned at the edge of a field, the robot uses a 3D camera to autonomously recognize the structure of the field and move to the first row of plants. Once there, different cameras, which also process invisible light, identify the position and the ripeness of the strawberries.
Two grippers are used to pick the ripe fruits from the plants under the robot. Like a human being, the fingers of the gripper enclose the strawberry and separate it with a twisting movement. The robot arm and gripper quickly move to the crate above and gently place the strawberry.

SHIVAA has been deliberately developed for use in the open field, where an organic end product is achieved by planting the strawberries naturally.
There, the robot can also pick alongside humans and thus be seamlessly integrated into a company. Additionally, night operation is possible, where constant artificial lighting creates even more favorable conditions for the robot’s image processing algorithms.

Videos

RoLand: Agricultural Robotics

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The aim of the project is to design and develop a semi-autonomous, mobile system that is capable of harvesting fruit independent of human interaction. While robotic systems are currently used mainly in greenhouses, the target scenario of the proposed project is the open field, taking into account the typical environmental influences associated with it. Taking into account a wide range of possible applications and a low investment volume, the aim is to develop a system that can also be operated economically by smaller farms. An adaptability of the work performance to the farm size-dependent demand is then given by the number of small systems working in parallel.

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last updated 19.08.2024