Design and experimental vibration analysis of a Cartesian strawberry harvesting robot for greenhouse environments

YILDIRIM Ş., Öztürk İ.

International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering, 2026 (Scopus)

Özet

Harvesting fragile fruits like strawberries is still a major engineering challenge in modern greenhouse agriculture due to human expenses and crop losses. In this practical study, a four-degree-of-freedom PPPR (prismatic–prismatic–prismatic–revolute) Cartesian robotic system and a customized end-effector were designed for effective strawberry harvesting. The vibration characteristics of the system were investigated using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). A Brüel & Kjaer (B&K) Type 4514 accelerometer was used as the reference sensor, while the inbuilt Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of the Intel RealSense D435i camera was used as an active vibration measurement source. Using both sensor systems, experimental vibration data from robotic motion experiments were obtained and compared. The findings demonstrated that, with relative errors below 2% when compared to the reference sensor, the IMU identified prominent resonance frequency components at about 5.12 Hz, 6.12 Hz, and 6.56 Hz. For the X, Y, and Z axes, the Pearson correlation coefficients between the IMU and reference data in the time domain were 0.985, 0.968, and 0.926, respectively. Based on the obtained results, the embedded IMU was able to identify the dominant resonance frequencies observed in the reference measurements. However, the sensor's 100 Hz sampling rate continues to limit its performance.