Work Efficiency Analysis of Multiple Heterogeneous Robots for Harvesting Crops in Smart Greenhouses

Extensive research is being conducted on using robots to automate harvest. However, most of the existing research is focused on the realization of harvesting using a single robot, and there have been very few studies on harvesting and transporting crops from a smart-greenhouse perspective. In this study, we demonstrate that the work efficiency is higher when a plurality of harvesting and transporting robots are used in tandem for harvesting crops in a smart greenhouse, compared to that when a single robot is used. The harvesting and transporting speeds of these robots are modeled in accordance with the facility environment. The operating speed of the robot group comprising only the harvesting robot and the harvesting and transporting robots is derived. In addition, the derived operating speed is analyzed based on the experimental data of the developed harvesting and transporting robots, and it was found that the overall operating speed increased when an appropriate combination of harvesting and transporting robots was used.