Mechanical Harvest of Fresh Market Apples: Progress over the Past Decades [Hardcover]

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.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.