Harvesting apparatus

Abstract

Harvesting apparatus particularly suited for picking citrus fruit, apples, and the like, has an adjustable boom mounted on a vehicle with a harvesting head secured to the free end of the boom for tilting and turning to either side and for forward and rearward tilting. A flexible and longitudinally expansible tube carries the picked fruit from the harvesting head to a suitable receptacle. A preferred embodiment of the harvesting head has a resiliently surfaced roller mounted for rotation in either of opposite directions between resiliently surfaced side walls of the head. As the roller gathers the fruit from a tree limb, the roller deposits the fruit in a passageway between the roller and one of the resilient side walls and rotates the fruit as it passes through a nip portion of the passageway, to release the fruit from the limb, and then release the limb from the harvesting head. Fingers spaced along either side wall prevent excessive movement of the limb lengthwise of the passageway and are mounted for upward movement to release the limb after the fruit has been removed from the limb. A second embodiment has a pair of contra-rotating rollers, one adjacent each of opposite resilient side walls of the head, and a third embodiment utilizes a rotating sphere within a resilient, inverted frusto-conical side wall of the head. Provision is made for varying the spacing between the side walls and roller or rollers, or sphere, in order to efficiently handle different sizes of fruit.