Design of Robotic Manipulator to Hollow Out Zucchini

Abstract

Abstract Robotics entered the food industry starting from packaging to cooking. Zucchini is an important dish in the Middle Eastern kitchen. The eventual challenge of hollowing out Zucchini is to avoid poking its bottom with the corer. This paper introduces a novel robotic mechanism for hollowing out zucchini tasks precisely and efficiently. The mobility of the robot arm ensured a smooth hollowing while the corer is put in motion. Moreover, frames are assigned to the tip of the corer, holder, zucchini and camera to avoid stabbing the zucchini bottom. Accordingly, the special Euclidean group of the homogenous transformation matrices derived between different links are discussed in the context of their properties. The kinematic analysis is based on Mozzi-Chasles’ theorem rather than using the traditional Denavit Hartenberg convention for better task-oriented planning of hollowing out zucchini mechanism. Results indicate a promising mechanism that is well designed, simple and easy to build, maintained and most importantly to perform the required task. This paper forms an important block in building the whole automated system to hollow out Zucchini.