Mobile-based motorized cutter mechanism for palm oil fresh fruit bunch harvesting

Abstract

Malaysia is the second-largest producer and exporter of palm oil after Indonesia. However, Malaysia's palm oil plantation is currently facing a labour shortage problem because a lot of foreign workers are going back to their country. The purpose of developing the motorized cutter mechanism for palm oil fruit harvesting is to assist the harvester in the harvesting process. There are many engineers and companies are investigating mechanization to make the fruit harvesting process easier. One of the concerns in the harvesting process is harvesters usually spend a lot of energy in holding and carrying the pole, moving it from one tree to the other tree, and navigating the sickle to the desired position. Some products such as motorized pole – Cantas and tractors with lifting mechanization have been developed to solve the problem. This research aims to improve the oil palm fruit harvesting method using a motorized cutter on a mobile cart. By adding a mechanism to hold the motorized cutter, the position of the Cantas’ sickle can be controlled by linear actuators and the mechanism is attached to the motorized trolley cart. The mechanism can provide 3 degrees of freedom to the user. Hence, the harvester can control Cantas’ position easily. The mechanism design is drawn using Solidworks software and the bill of materials is estimated from it. The prototype is built and tested in the lab and actual palm tree to get the performance data of the harvesting mechanism.