Study on Mechanical Properties of Tomatoes for the End-Effector Design of the Harvesting Robot

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

·         The keywords should be different from the words in the title of the article, let's fix it.

·         The pages are not line numbered. how will the author make corrections?

·         The literature reviews given in the introduction should be supported by numerical figures.

·         In the introduction you should further clarify the purpose of the publication.

·         The physical properties of the samples used in the experiment should be given in a table. Minimum maximum mean and standard deviation values must be included in this table.

·         How were the tomatoes used in the trials selected?

·         How were they stored until the experiment?

·         What was used for physical measurements and what is their precision?

·         A literature should show the maturity times given by the author for tomatoes.

·         How many samples were used in the experiment.

·         All units in the article should be written in superscripted format, including graphics and tables. (mm sn^-1)

·         Was the creep test performed only on one side of the tomato? If only one direction, why were 3 different directions not tried as in the puncture test?

·         The force-deformation curve must be added to the article.

·         Why was 1 mm s-1 used in all tests? As you know, this speed is very important in such experiments. Was this speed chosen according to your mind or is it based on the literature. Please indicate this.

·         The number of samples is not given in all 3 tests. They should be given.

·         What is the difference between instantaneous elasticity -retarded elasticity (N mm-1) and elasticity (N mm-2)? How can you show the elasticity as N mm-1?

·         How were the values of ? and ?1 found?

·         As far as I know, strength is not indicated with N, its unit is N mm-2. Let's check it.

·         How were brittleness and toughness calculated? There is no data about this in the material method section.

·         What is a,b,c,d given in the table? should be explained under the table.

·         In Figure 6, graphs of the period of 4 different cases should be given.

·         Figure 9 Where is the graph of the green maturation stage?

·         During the in-

·         “During the initial phase, as force was incrementally applied through the flat plate probe, there was a corresponding increase in the force exerted on the tomato's surface, resulting in a concur- rent elevation in deformation. During this phase, the correlation between load and defor- mation maintained an approximate linearity, which is indicative of elastic compression” This sentence is about how the compression test is performed. It has no place in the results section. It should be in the method section

·         Minimum and maximum values should be given in table 3 and table 4.

·         In the article, the mechanical properties of tomato were determined. The title mentions the rheumatic robot, but there is no information on how these values are used in the harvesting robot and how they will be used. This relationship must be given in the article. The article is unacceptable in this form.

·         Most important of all, hundreds of studies have been conducted on the mechanical properties of tomato. When I look at the article, only the values found in the study are given in the result and discussion section, but these values are not compared with previous studies. The values found in a scientific article must be compared with the results of previous studies. An article without discussion is not scientific. Discussion section must be added to the article. The article cannot be accepted in this form.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment for detailed information.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study suggests that when harvesting tomatoes at the semi-ripening stage and beyond, attention should be paid to trimming the stem. Compression experiments were conducted on tomatoes, and it was discovered that under the same ripening stage, the axial compressive rupture force of tomatoes was greater than the radial rupture force. Tomatoes exhibited anisotropic behavior. The grasping direction is axial which can be used as the new design direction of the end-effector. Nonetheless, the manuscript does require some improvements, as outlined below:

(1) In the second paragraph of this paper, the introduction of the existing research results is too detailed, which needs to be streamlined to some extent, and it is best to divide into two parts, the first is to introduce the characteristics of various fruits and vegetables except tomatoes, and the second is to study the characteristics of tomatoes.

(2) Two "%" appear in the third row from the bottom of section 2.1 Materials, and it should be noted how many tomatoes of different ripeness were selected for the experiment.

(3) In section 3.1. Creep Test, it is suggested to improve the placement of pictures and tables. The Table is not mentioned in the discussion paragraph of "Table 3", and it is suggested that further analysis of the correlation between the data can be carried out.

(4) In conclusion, it was mentioned that protecting the sepals of tomato can reduce the damage to tomato during picking, but no comparative experiment was conducted to show that preserving sepals can improve the rupture force of tomato.

It is suggested to minor repair!

Comments on the Quality of English Language

This article needs a moderate revision of the English language, some words need to be used more rigorously, and some sentences need to be appropriately modified in punctuation and grammar.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment for detailed information.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is devoted to the study of the mechanical properties of tomato fruits of different degrees of ripeness for the subsequent design of a robot gripping mechanism.

The material of the article is of scientific and practical interest and corresponds to the topics of the journal “Agriculture”.

 

 

However, before publishing, authors should pay attention to the following notes:

1) The methodology needs to be improved. Visualize the structure of an article using mind maps

2) Formulate more clearly the purpose of the study and the objectives of the study: 1,2,3...

3) In accordance with the tasks, make a “Conclusions” section, and your conclusions are now more like a discussion. They can be displayed in a separate “Discussion” section

4) In addition to fig. 1 add a diagram of the experiment.

5) What software is used in the experiment? Describe and provide a screenshot of the program’s operation (it’s hard to see in Fig. 1)

6) Add to the literature review the characteristics of grippers in robotic systems for tomatoes that are currently used, with their analysis - positive and negative qualities. You can also describe grips for other vegetables and fruits. I recommend making a separate section “Literary Review”

7) There is not enough practical significance of your research. How will your research help design a robotic gripping device? Nothing is said about this, and without such a subsection the practical meaning of your article is lost. Please pay attention to this issue.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment for detailed information.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I thank the author for making all the suggested corrections. However, as I stated in my first report, there are hundreds of studies on this subject. The 2 pieces of literature added by the author in the discussion section are definitely not enough (lines 271- 276, 351-357), more previous studies should be included in the discussion section. The data found by the author should be discussed with much more literature.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment for details.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf