UC Davis

Abstract With the increase in agriculture prices, reduced farm labor supply, and a higher population, fruit production must increase in the future. Shake-catch harvesting is a method where a tree’s trunk is shaken, and the fruits fall and drop onto catching surfaces. Existing designs cause excessive fruit damage and hence are used only for processing fruits or nuts. This work focuses on designing, building, and testing an apparatus for catching fruits in free fall without causing damage. First, several design variants were considered, and one design was selected. Next, a small-scale system was designed using CAD and built. Fruit-dropping on this system was simulated in ANSYS to predict fruit impact characteristics. Also, the simulation was calibrated by dropping an artificial instrumented fruit and measuring the impact characteristics. Finally, real fruit drop experiments were performed using cling peaches to assess the system’s capability to collect fruit without causing damage. The calibrated simulation will be used in future work to explore more design alternatives, guide material selection, and perform system optimization.