Model Building and Simulation of the Suspension System for a Robotic Asparagus Harvester

Abstract

The demand for high accuracy on automated harvesters is getting higher. While system accuracy is lowered by vibration resulted when a robot with sensors and arms is running on the field. Applying suspension system onto these automated harvesters is a solution to reduce the vibration effects and assure required accuracy. This paper presents a model of the suspension system for a robotic asparagus harvester. The simulation results showed that the peak value of vibration was reduced to an acceptable level. Most importantly, the peak deflection of a vibrated platform was decreased to a required range as well. At the end of this paper, a conclusion is drawn. A suspension system is suggested to reduce vibration effects and improve the accuracy of both sensors and picking arms for mobile manipulators. In the future, this suspension system will be fabricated and installed onto a robotic asparagus harvester to validate this proposed model.