Automated Mushroom Harvesting System
Introduction
The Technology Division at the Cullen College of Engineering has received from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) a grant to develop an Automated Mushroom Harvesting System. We collaborate with Monterey Mushroom at Madisonville, TX.
The goal of this research is to develop a mobile robotic chassis with mechanical gripping system and computer vision to identify and harvest mushrooms. The mushrooms are grown on shelves. Each shelf has typically six levels of growth trays. Between each two levels, there is limited space (about 8 inches). Existing robots cannot work in such limited space. To meet the production requirements, we are in the process of developing mobile-robot-based system to harvest mushroom involving: 1) mushroom gripping; 2) computer vision; 3) robot motion control; 4) mobile robot path planning; 5) power management; and 6) system integration.
In addition to this project, we also have two other ongoing USDA projects: 1) IoT-based mushroom production optimization; and 2) Mushroom stem for organic chicken feed (collaboration with Prairie View A&M and University of Georgia).
The relevant publication list:
- Jiming Kang, Abdollah Zakeri, Bikram Koirala, Raman Silwal, Venkatesh Balan, Fatima Merchant, Weihang Zhu*, A Rapid Method for SCARA Robot Path Planning in the Automated Mushroom Harvesting System, DETC2025-169039, ASME IDETC/CIE 2025, Anaheim, California, August 17-20, 2025
- Md Salahuddin, Venkatesh Balan, Kayla G. Stamps, Ahmed A.A. Abdel-Wareth, Maedeh Mohammadi, Woo Kyun Kim, Weihang Zhu, Jayant Lohakare*, Harnessing mushrooms for poultry nutrition: Boosting health, immunity, and productivity, Poultry Science, Volume 104, Issue 8, August 2025, 105223
- Abdollah Zakeri, Mulham Fawakherji, Jiming Kang, Bikram Koirala, Venkatesh Balan, Weihang Zhu, Driss Benhaddou, Fatima A Merchant *, A Multi-Purpose Real-World Dataset for Mushroom Detection, 3D Pose Estimation, and Growth Monitoring, Computers, Computers 2025, 14(5), 199; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14050199
- Abdollah Zakeri; Bikram Koirala; Jiming Kang; Venkatesh Balan; Weihang Zhu; Driss Benhaddou, Fatima Merchant, SMS3D: 3D Synthetic Mushroom Scenes Dataset for 3D Object Detection and Pose Estimation, Computers, accepted on March 27, 2025
- Bikram Koirala, Abdollah Zakeri, Jiming Kang, Abishek Kafle, Venkatesh Balan, Fatima A Merchant, Driss Benhaddou, Weihang Zhu *, Robotic button mushrooms harvesting systems: a review of design, mechanism, and future directions, Applied Sciences, 2024, 14(20), 9229, https://doi.org/10.3390/app14209229
- Bikram Koirala, Abishek Kafle, Huy Canh Nguyen, Jiming Kang, Abdollah Zakeri, Venkatesh Balan, Fatima Merchant, Driss Benhaddou, Weihang Zhu*, A Hybrid Three-Finger Gripper for Automated Harvesting of Button Mushroom, Actuators 2024, 13(8), 287; https://doi.org/10.3390/act13080287, Accepted July 29, 2024. The paper has been selected as the issue cover: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/13/8
- Biru Bikram Koirala, Guoyang Shen, Huy Nguyen, Jiming Kang, Abdollah Zakeri, Venkatesh Balan, Fatima Merchant, Driss Benhaddou, Weihang Zhu*, Development of a Compact Hybrid Gripper for Automated Harvesting of White Button Mushroom, ASME IDETC/CIE2024-143056, Washington DC, August 2024
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