Fruit identification and location technology plays a significant role in modern agriculture, especially in smart agriculture and automated picking systems. Due to factors such as irregular fruit distribution, branch and leaf obstruction, and environmental light, traditional manual or ground positioning methods face many challenges in large orchards. Through current research on the phased achievements of fruit recognition and positioning based on unmanned aerial vehicles, the key technologies of fruit recognition and positioning are deeply analyzed.
Fruit identification and location technology is a key link in smart orchards. The positioning technology based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) significantly improves the positioning accuracy in complex environments through high flexibility and multi-sensor fusion. Research shows that machine vision and multi-sensor fusion models have made progress in the positioning of fruits such as citrus and strawberries, thanks to the three-dimensional spatial flexibility of multi-rotor platforms, the efficiency of cluster operations, and their adaptability to orchards. However, this technology still faces many technical bottlenecks in practical applications: the complex orchard environment has a significant impact on the flight stability of unmanned aerial vehicles and the accuracy of sensors, and the humid climate also shortens the service life of the equipment. The positioning accuracy and real-time performance of existing algorithms are difficult to balance in scenarios with severe fruit occlusion and dense overlap, and there is a contradiction between lightweight models and high-precision requirements. Meanwhile, the equipment cost is high, the cluster control and data fusion technology is still not mature, and the standardization degree of orchard planting is insufficient. Enhancing environmental adaptability through multi-sensor fusion and intelligent algorithm optimization, developing lightweight and modular recognition models, ensuring positioning efficiency, and promoting the standardization of orchard planting will be the key directions for breakthroughs in fruit positioning technology based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms.
