Apple harvesting robot under information technology: A review

It has been more than 30 years since the French pioneered the research of the apple harvesting robot, and with the joint efforts of scholars all around the world, a variety of prototypes have been developed. However, the existing apple harvesting robot prototype is still in the experimental research stage because of its low harvesting efficiency. With the help of information technology, the related research has ushered in a milestone development, and it is full of opportunities and challenges for apple harvesting robotic researchers. In this article, it briefly introduced the development history, structure, and composition of apple harvesting robots and the operation process, which makes readers have a clear understanding of apple harvesting robot and its harvesting principle. Then systematically summarizing the research results of apple harvesting robots both at domestic and at foreign, we carried out in following three aspects: rapid and accurate recognition and positioning of target fruit, all-weather operation mode, and application of intelligent computing theory in apple harvesting robots, and it analyzes the research progress of apple harvesting robot in detail. The results show that improving the harvesting efficiency is the key and hot spot for the research on apple harvesting robots. Under the impetus of information technology, how to achieve fast and accurate recognition of the fruits of multienvironment and multiple information, obtain reasonable path planning, and further optimization of control strategies are all important research directions.