Arbutus Berry Detection and Classification for Harvesting

Automated fruit harvesting systems rely heavily on accurate visual perception, particularly for crops such as the Arbutus tree (Arbutus unedo), which holds both ecological and economic significance. However, this species poses considerable challenges for computer vision due to its dense foliage and the morphological variability of its berries across different ripening stages. Despite its importance, the Arbutus tree remains under-explored in the context of precision agriculture and robotic harvesting. This study addresses that gap by evaluating a computer vision-based approach to detect and classify Arbutus berries into three ripeness categories: green, yellow-orange, and red. A significant contribution of this work is the release of two fully annotated open-access datasets, Arbutus Berry Detection Dataset and Arbutus Berry Ripeness Level Detection Dataset, developed through a structured manual labeling process. Additionally, we benchmarked four YOLO architectures—YOLOv8n, YOLOv9t, YOLOv10n, and YOLO11n—as well as the RT-DETR models, using these datasets. Among these, RT-DETR-L demonstrated the most consistent performance in terms of precision, recall, and generalization, outperforming the lighter YOLO models in both speed and accuracy. This highlights RT-DETR’s strong potential for deployment in real-time automated harvesting systems, where robust detection and efficient inference are critical.