Development of a telescopic elastic-tooth chili pepper harvester: design and field optimization

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Engineering
• Robotics and Automation

Background:

• Current mechanical pepper harvesters suffer from high fruit damage rates and inefficient bottom fruit removal.
• These issues limit the overall effectiveness and economic viability of automated pepper harvesting.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a self-propelled telescopic elastic-tooth pepper harvester.
• To reduce the picking angle and improve the net harvesting rate of chili peppers.
• To minimize fruit damage during mechanical harvesting.

Main Methods:

• Kinematic and contact mechanics analysis to determine optimal tooth structure and operating parameters.
• Box-Behnken response surface methodology with forward speed, spindle speed, and tooth angle as factors.
• Optimization using Design-Expert software to establish a quadratic regression model.

Main Results:

• The optimized parameters (forward speed: 58 m·min⁻¹, spindle speed: 201 r·min⁻¹, tooth angle: 4°) predicted a 94.0% picking rate and 4.5% damage rate.
• Field verification achieved a 90.2% picking rate and 6.6% damage rate, with errors under 5%.
• The telescopic elastic-tooth design effectively enhanced harvesting performance.

Conclusions:

• The developed telescopic elastic-tooth picking unit significantly improves pepper harvesting efficiency.
• The design successfully maintains a low fruit damage rate, addressing critical limitations of existing harvesters.
• This innovation offers a promising solution for more effective automated chili pepper production.