Development of Apple Detection System and Reinforcement Learning for Apple Manipulator

Modern deep learning systems make it possible to develop increasingly intelligent solutions in various fields of science and technology. The electronics of single board computers facilitate the control of various robotic solutions. At the same time, the implementation of such tasks does not require a large amount of resources. However, deep learning models still require a high level of computing power. Thus, the effective control of an intelligent robot manipulator is possible when a computationally complex deep learning model on GPU graphics devices and a mechanics control unit on a single-board computer work together. In this regard, the study is devoted to the development of a computer vision model for estimation of the coordinates of objects of interest, as well as the subsequent recalculation of coordinates relative to the control of the manipulator to form a control action. In addition, in the simulation environment, a reinforcement learning model was developed to determine the optimal path for picking apples from 2D images. The detection efficiency on the test images was 92%, and in the laboratory it was possible to achieve 100% detection of apples. In addition, an algorithm has been trained that provides adequate guidance to apples located at a distance of 1 m along the Z axis. Thus, the original neural network used to recognize apples was trained using a big image dataset, algorithms for estimating the coordinates of apples were developed and investigated, and the use of reinforcement learning was suggested to optimize the picking policy.