Review on Theory and Equipment of Mechanical Vibration Picking of Forest Fruits

China is one of the origins of forest fruits, and picking is an important part of forest fruit industry production. Mechanized picking is one of the important means to achieve rapid harvesting of forest fruits instead of manual work, which is an inevitable direction driven by the development of modern agriculture. Mechanical vibration picking is currently the most widely used technology, and the working performance of forest fruit picking machinery is mainly determined by the vibration effect. Therefore, through the research and analysis of various types of forest fruit mechanical vibratory picking equipment at home and abroad, four key mechanical vibratory picking theories were summarized, such as factors affecting vibratory picking, three-dimensional reconstruction and equivalence model of fruit trees, fruit vibratory shedding characteristics as well as vibratory energy transfer and dissipation, and the current deficiencies of each theory were elucidated. On this basis, the research status and progress of mechanized picking equipment for forest fruits at home and abroad were described, the scope of application, working principle and classification of mechanical pickers for forest fruits were analyzed, the models and technical parameters of typical vibratory and contact pickers were summarized, and the practical problems arising from the application operation of each model were pointed out. Combined with the application scenarios and development requirements of the forest fruit industry, the main problems faced by China's forest fruit mechanized picking were analyzed, and it was believed that the lack of systematic theoretical research and the slow progress of key technology research were the key constraints to the development of forest fruit mechanization, and it was put forward that the technical focus of the future forest fruit mechanized picking would be on high-efficiency, precise, and low-loss picking, and that ultimately, it would be necessary to achieve the automation of forest fruit and intelligent picking proposals. © 2023 Chinese Society of Agricultural Machinery. All rights reserved.