Characterizing the mechanical properties of eggplant (Melina F1) fruits, for the design and production of agricultural robots

Abstract

The development of enhanced multitasking agricultural robots required a greater understanding of the mechanical properties of the crop in question. This study evaluated the physicomechanical properties (mass, failure force, failure energy, and compressibility) of eggplant (Melina F1) fruit to improve the performance of harvesting and sorting robots. Compression loading was applied to eggplant fruits of three sizes (small, medium, and large) at three fruit regions (head, middle and tail). The mechanical testing results revealed that fruit size and fruit region had a significant (p ≤0.01) effect on the mechanical properties of the fruits. The fruit mass increased significantly (p ≤0.01) as the fruit size increased. This study revealed that small fruits had the lowest body mass (225.9 g), while large fruits had the highest body mass (402.8 g). Similarly, the results showed that the failure force and energy increased significantly (p ≤0.01) as the fruit size increased from small to large, with the middle region having the highest values and the tail region having the lowest values. Small berries In terms of fruit compressibility, the results revealed that compressibility increased significantly (p ≤0.01) as fruit size increased from small to large, with the tail region having the highest compressibility and the head region having the lowest. Because agricultural robot optimization entailed optimizing the effectiveness of object identifiers, manipulators, and so on, the data obtained from this study will aid software expertise in developing an advanced agricultural robot for precision operations.