Design and evaluation of a data collector robot for plant-level strawberry monitoring and harvesting support in greenhouse environments

Abstract Greenhouse crop monitoring systems predominantly rely on sensor-based measurements of environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, while largely neglecting plant- and fruit-specific information. For delicate crops such as strawberries, this lack of plant-level perception limits the assessment of ripeness, spatial distribution, and localized growth conditions, which are essential for informed crop management. Enabling frequent, plant-specific visual and spatial monitoring therefore provides a necessary foundation for downstream tasks such as harvest planning and automated picking. To address this gap, this study presents a data collector robot (DCR) designed for plant-specific monitoring through a decoupled perception–action workflow. The proposed DCR integrates a red-green-blue-depth (RGB-D) camera, a robotic arm, and a rail-guided mobile platform to perform repeatable, multi-view image acquisition in greenhouse environments. Collected data are transmitted to a cloud server, where strawberry detection and localization are performed using a you-only-look-once (YOLO)-based model, and the processed results are stored for remote access and downstream use. This architecture enables accurate plant-level perception while avoiding the need for high-performance onboard computing. Experimental evaluations assess localization repeatability, robustness of cloud-based processing under variable network conditions, and continuous multi-plant operation. Results demonstrate a localization root-mean-square (RMS) of 0.39 mm, stable cloud-assisted inference with no dropped detections under simulated network impairments, and reliable performance across 100 complete data-collection cycles. A comparative analysis further shows that cloud-based processing offers a cost-effective alternative to local graphical processing unit (GPU)-based inference for scalable deployment. Overall, the proposed DCR provides a lightweight and modular solution for plant-level greenhouse monitoring and establishes a practical foundation for future autonomous strawberry harvesting systems.