Laser-Powered Harvesting Tool for Tabletop Grown Strawberries

In this paper, a novel tool prototype for harvesting tabletop-grown strawberries is presented. Demonstrating resilience to localization inaccuracies of up to ±15 mm and achieving an average cycle time of 8.02 s at half its maximum operational speed, the tool represents a promising step forward in automating strawberry harvesting. It features a compact 35 mm fruit-engagement width, improving accessibility through its small operational footprint. A complete harvesting system is also proposed that can be mounted to a mobile platform for field tests. An experimental demonstration is performed to showcase the new methodology and derive relevant metrics.