Accurately identifying cherry-tomato picking points and obtaining their coordinate locations is critical to the success of cherry-tomato picking robots. However, previous methods for semantic segmentation alone or combining object detection with traditional image processing have struggled to accurately determine the cherry-tomato picking point due to challenges such as leaves as well as targets that are too small. In this study, we propose a YOLOv8n-DDA-SAM model that adds a semantic segmentation branch to target detection to achieve the desired detection and compute the picking point. To be specific, YOLOv8n is used as the initial model, and a dynamic snake convolutional layer (DySnakeConv) that is more suitable for the detection of the stems of cherry-tomato is used in neck of the model. In addition, the dynamic large convolutional kernel attention mechanism adopted in backbone and the use of ADown convolution resulted in a better fusion of the stem features with the neck features and a certain decrease in the number of model parameters without loss of accuracy. Combined with semantic branch SAM, the mask of picking points is effectively obtained and then the accurate picking point is obtained by simple shape-centering calculation. As suggested by the experimental results, the proposed YOLOv8n-DDA-SAM model is significantly improved from previous models not only in detecting stems but also in obtaining stem’s masks. In the mAP@0.5 and F1-score, the YOLOv8n-DDA-SAM achieved 85.90% and 86.13% respectively. Compared with the original YOLOv8n, YOLOv7, RT-DETR-l and YOLOv9c, the mAP@0.5 has improved by 24.7%, 21.85%, 19.76%, 15.99% respectively. F1-score has increased by 16.34%, 12.11%, 10.09%, 8.07% respectively, and the number of parameters is only 6.37M. In the semantic segmentation branch, not only does it not need to produce relevant datasets, but also improved its mIOU by 11.43%, 6.94%, 5.53%, 4.22% and mAP@0.5 by 12.33%, 7.49%, 6.4%, 5.99% compared to Deeplabv3+, Mask2former, DDRNet and SAN respectively. In summary, the model can well satisfy the requirements of high-precision detection and provides a strategy for the detection system of the cherry-tomato.

The accurate detection of litchi fruit cluster is the key technology of litchi picking robot. In the natural environment during the day, due to the unstable light intensity, uncertain light angle, background clutter and other factors, the identification and positioning accuracy of litchi fruit cluster is greatly affected. Therefore, we proposed a method to detect litchi fruit cluster in the night environment. The use of artificial light source and fixed angle can effectively improve the identification and positioning accuracy of litchi fruit cluster. In view of the weak light intensity and reduced image features in the nighttime environment, we proposed the YOLOv8n-CSE model. The model improves the recognition of litchi clusters in night environment. Specifically, we use YOLOv8n as the initial model, and introduce the CPA-Enhancer module with chain thinking prompt mechanism in the neck part of the model, so that the network can alleviate problems such as image feature degradation in the night environment. In addition, the VoVGSCSP design pattern in Slimneck was adopted for the neck part, which made the model more lightweight. The multi-scale linear attention mechanism and the EfficientViT module, which can be deeply divided, further improved the detection accuracy and detection rate of YOLOv8n-CSE. The experimental results show that the proposed YOLOv8n-CSE model can not only recognize litchi clusters in the night scene, but also has a significant improvement over previous models. In mAP@0.5 and F1, YOLOv8n-CSE achieved 98.86% and 95.54% respectively. Compared with the original YOLOv8n, RT-DETR-l and YOLOv10n, mAP@0.5 is increased by 4.03%, 3.46% and 3.96%, respectively. When the number of parameters is only 4.93 m, F1 scores are increased by 5.47%, 2.96% and 6.24%, respectively. YOLOv8n-CSE achieves an inference time of 36.5ms for the desired detection results. To sum up, the model can satisfy the criteria of the litchi cluster detection system for extremely accurate nighttime environment identification.