Low cost robotic arm design for pruning and fruit harvesting in developing nations

It is often necessary to prune the trees which causes nuisance to public and transportation on the road sides or even within the house premises. Alternatively farmers struggle to reach to heights in order to harvest fruits in their orchards. Most of the robots used in pruning and harvesting fruits are very high cost and used in developed nations. They are also designed for fruits trees like apple, apricot etc. In this research paper, we introduce the design of a low cost robotic arm that can be used for pruning and harvesting fruits from trees in developing nations like India. The arm can be attached to the end of a pole and can be used for pruning and harvesting fruits. It is controlled in wireless fashion with bluetooth wireless interface from the ground. A smart phone based app is used to control the arm movement. The arm is attached with a powered cutter at the end, which can also be controlled in wireless manner. The design, implementation, testing, and results are presented in this paper.