# Robotic Button Mushroom Harvesting Systems: A Review of Design, Mechanism, and Future Directions
## 6 Potential and Challenges  
With the global mushroom market continually expanding, automated harvesters present significant opportunities. However, since automated harvesting technology is still developing, there are many challenges and unknowns for both researchers and the mushroom industry. Potentials:  
1. Increased Productivity: Semi-automated or fully automated harvesting systems greatly reduce reliance on human labor. Reliable machines can operate for longer hours, enhancing productivity. These systems can be optimized to use the most effective picking methods based on the mushroom's growth stage, reducing both the picking time and energy expenditure. 2. Enhanced Mushroom Monitoring and Quality Control: Automated harvesters can track the entire lifecycle of mushrooms, identifying their growth stages, detecting damage and diseases, and monitoring distribution. With the help of various sensors and feedback systems, these harvesters can detect and address diseases early, preserving the quality and extending the life of the remaining mushrooms, thus improving overall production. 3. Seamless Integration with Automated Production Systems: Automated harvesters can be integrated with other automation stages in the mushroom industry, including pre-harvesting and post-harvesting processes. This integration minimizes time delays between stages and enhances communication, leading to greater overall efficiency. 4. Advanced Computer Vision: Enhancing computer vision through faster controllers and advanced computers can improve speed and accuracy. Utilizing 3D cameras and depth sensors can help the harvester approach mushrooms from the optimal angle, reducing injuries. Better model training and 3D mapping can also enhance detection accuracy, especially for clustered mushrooms, and shorten detection times. Challenges:  
1. Working Environment and Space Availability: Most of the work that has been conducted so far in button mushroom harvesting is for the aluminum Dutch shelves with a specific design and arrangement. There are extant mushroom farms that use wooden shelves and other growing environments, which offer significant challenges to de \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Harvester** &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Picking Speed** \\ **[Mushrooms/h]** \\ \end{tabular} & **Success Rate [\%]** & **References** \\ \hline Manual & 2000 & \(\sim\)100 & [41; 52] \\ \hline Mycionics & 2700 & - & [58] \\ \hline Dorna Robotics & 2200 & 80 & [41] \\ \hline AG Robotics & 1600–2000 & 95 & [7] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Comparison of commercial harvester picking performance with manual picking. signing the harvesters that can be used in these environments. Modifications to the existing designs may not be feasible. Furthermore, some of the harvester components require significant space inside the shelves to be installed. Therefore, the harvesting system, which is flexible in terms of the working environment, is a critical challenge. 2. Adaptability: Button mushrooms grow in different sizes and shapes. The distribution of mushrooms on the growth bed is very irregular: from sparsely distributed single-grown mushrooms to densely packed cluster mushrooms. Thus far, the works have mostly focused on single-grown mushrooms of a limited size range. The damage associated with end-effectors is higher than that of human pickers. The development of an end-effector that can adapt to any mushroom regardless of its size, shape, or distribution is very challenging at the present time. 3. Maintenance and Downtime: This is one of the fields that has not been explored for mushroom harvesters. In the long run, the machine will need regular maintenance and may experience downtime due to technical issues. The reliability of the machines overtime and the loss associated with downtime are not yet studied, which could be a critical issue in the future. 4. Technical complexity and efficiency: Automated harvesters include different physical and non-physical components that must be meticulously designed and operated.