Design and Development of an Automatic Precision Cutting System for Herb Stems

In the processing of vegetables as well as preparation for fresh consumption, the leaf part of the vegetable is separated from the stem manually and non-mechanically. This research was carried out in order to design and development an automatic system for precise cutting of vegetable stems harvested from the field. Machine vision was used to determine the appropriate cutting position. In this way, after placing the product on the conveyor, it is automatically photographed and after identifying the cutting location, a cutting mechanism separates the leaf part of the plant from its stem. The designed cutting system performed the cutting of the samples with an accuracy of about 3 mm. It takes about 4 seconds to identify the cutting location and perform cutting, so the maximum capacity of the machine is 15 cuts per minute. The output of the machine had acceptable quality in cases where the incoming vegetables were evenly and freshly harvested.