Abstract: Red jujube picking is an important research for improving the production and achieving sustainable development of jujube industry in Xinjiang. This paper put forward a 3-RPS in-parallel picking manipulator of polar coordinate type which was used to overcome the problem of small load and inflexible picking of the vibrating manipulator. The improved differential evolution algorithm was introduced to solve the forward kinematics problem of the picking manipulator for planning the platform pose. The improved differential evolution algorithm could obtain a high solution efficiency and global searching abilities, avoid premature convergence, as well as get an accurate trajectory. The results showed the feasibility and generality of the new method which could develop the picking manipulator in agricultural industry.

Key words: differential evolution algorithm, 3-RPS, red jujube picking, manipulator, forward kinematics