The cultivation of apples and pears in orchards consists of several tasks that still demand much human labor. The cost of this skilled labor increases while the number of competent seasonal workers becomes insufficient. These facts are a threat to the fruit industry. To find a solution, this paper addresses current as well as future automation possibilities for the main orchard tasks as a profitable alternative to human labor. Besides an activity research in pome fruit orchards, this paper contains an overall review of the research and developments that have been performed to automate each major activity (e.g., pruning, thinning, spraying, harvesting and mobile navigating) in the cultivation of pome fruit. These tasks are individually evaluated on feasibility and profitability of the developed automations. Finally, this paper concludes that, despite the large amount of research, almost no fully automated and cost-efficient solution has been developed. A possible option to increase the viability of the prototypes might be the simplification of the tree structures, and consequently the orchard architecture, to make it “robot-ready.” Another option in this perspective is combining several techniques, for accomplishing individual tasks, in one multipurpose robot platform. As a result, the usability and efficiency of the robot increases.

中文翻译：

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种植石榴果实的自动化和机器人技术：我们今天站在哪里？

在果园中种植苹果和梨包括几个任务，这些任务仍然需要大量的人工。当熟练的季节性工人的数量变得不足时，这种熟练工人的成本增加了。这些事实对水果行业构成威胁。为了找到解决方案，本文讨论了主要果园任务的当前和未来自动化可能性，以此作为替代人工的有利条件。除了对石榴果园的活性研究以外，本文还对为使石榴果栽培中的每个主要活动（例如修剪，稀疏，喷洒，收获和移动导航）自动化而进行的研究和开发进行了全面回顾。这些任务是针对已开发的自动化系统的可行性和获利能力进行单独评估的。最后，本文得出的结论是，尽管进行了大量的研究，但几乎没有开发出完全自动化且具有成本效益的解决方案。提高原型的可行性的一种可能选择是简化树结构，从而简化果园体系结构，使其“适合机器人使用”。从这个角度来看，另一种选择是在一个多用途机器人平台中结合多种技术来完成单独的任务。结果，增加了机器人的可用性和效率。在一个多用途机器人平台中完成个人任务。结果，增加了机器人的可用性和效率。在一个多用途机器人平台中完成个人任务。结果，增加了机器人的可用性和效率。