RoMu4o: A Robotic Manipulation Unit For Orchard Operations Automating Proximal Hyperspectral Leaf Sensing

Abstract

Driven by the need to address labor shortages and meet the demands of a rapidly growing population, robotic automation has become a critical component in precision agriculture. Leaf-level hyperspectral spectroscopy is shown to be a powerful tool for phenotyping, monitoring crop health, identifying essential nutrients within plants as well as detecting diseases and water stress. This work introduces RoMu4o, a robotic manipulation unit for orchard operations offering an automated solution for proximal hyperspectral leaf sensing. This ground robot is equipped with a 6DOF robotic arm and vision system for real-time deep learning-based image processing and motion planning. We developed robust perception and manipulation pipelines that enable the robot to successfully grasp target leaves and perform spectroscopy. These frameworks operate synergistically to identify and extract the 3D structure of leaves from an observed batch of foliage, propose 6D poses, and generate collision-free constraint-aware paths for precise leaf manipulation. The end-effector of the arm features a compact design that integrates an independent lighting source with a hyperspectral sensor, enabling high-fidelity data acquisition while streamlining the calibration process for accurate measurements. Our ground robot is engineered to operate in unstructured orchard environments. However, the performance of the system is evaluated in both indoor and outdoor plant models. The system demonstrated reliable performance for 1-LPB hyperspectral sampling, achieving 95% success rate in lab trials and 79% in field trials. Field experiments revealed an overall success rate of 70% for autonomous leaf grasping and hyperspectral measurement in a pistachio orchard. The open-source repository is available at: https://github.com/mehradmrt/UCM-AgBot-ROS2