This book presents the progress, changes, and evolvement for apple mechanical harvest during the past decades, which include, but not limited to, bulky harvest method, harvest platform, apple infield sorting, and harvest robotics. Though there are significant progresses in apple harvest robotics, there still is a long way ahead before its practical applications, with existing and potential bottlenecks described in this book. Hence, other researchers would take advantage of this book to have a hint of the apple mechanical harvest history and state-of-the-art progress, so that they can find the room for their new research. This book targets senior undergraduates and more importantly graduate students in the field of agricultural engineering, sensing, automatic, and robotics.

Autorentext

Dr. Zhao Zhang earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University. After conducting research as Postdoc with USDA-ARS, he joined the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University, as Research Assistant Professor.

Dr. Zhaohua Zhang earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Auburn University. After earning the degree, she immediately returned to China and joined the College of Economics and Management, Shandong Agricultural University. She is a now Associated Professor and has been very active in the research area of agricultural economics.

Dr. Cannayen Igathinathane is tenured Associated Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University. He has built his name in the area of agricultural engineering, and he has a very wide range of research interest topics from biomass to imaging process and from harvesting logistics to precision agriculture.

Dr. Yingkuan Wang earned both his B.S. and M.S. from the Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University and Ph.D. from Beijing University. He has been very active in the field of agricultural engineering and takes Editor-in-Chief role for the International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.

Dr. Yiannis Ampatzidis is Assistant Professor with University of Florida, and he has been very active in the sensing and automation in agriculture and conducted a number of project in precision agriculture. Dr. Gang Liu is Professor with China Agricultural University, and his expertise is in the domain of agricultural engineering.

Inhalt

Technology evolvement in mechanical harvest of fresh market apples.- Design, test, and improvement of a low-cost fresh market apple harvest-assist unit.- Economic evaluation of a low-cost fresh market apple harvest-assist unit.- Ergonomic analysis of a low-cost fresh market apple harvest-assist unit.- Development, evaluation and improvement of apple infield grading and sorting systems.- Development, test, and improvement of an infield use bin filler.- Economic analysis of an apple harvest and infield sorting machine.- Comparison and evaluation of apple harvesting process under different harvest methods.