Study on a Bowl-based Mechanism for Transplanting Potted Strawberry Seedlings

To improve the efficiency of fetching and transplanting seedlings for the mechanization of strawberry planting,an integrated transplanting mechanism was designed with protruding,fetching and planting performance to achieve rapid fetching and pushing bowl movements.According to the working principle of the slewing mechanism,a kinematics model and the optimization goal were established,respectively.Based on visual auxiliary analysis software,optimal parameters were obtained.A three-dimensional model was established to obtain a simulation trajectory by means of a virtual simulation design analysis.Three-dimensional printing technology was used to manufacture the test prototype,and the actual working trajectories of the test prototype were extracted using high-speed photography technology,which verified the consistency of the actual trajectory with the theoretical and simulated trajectories.A prototype transplanting experiment was performed with the success rate of seedling extraction of 91.2%and excellent planting rate of 82.8%,which met the requirements for integrated strawberry harvesting,planting and transplanting.The experimental results verified the correctness and feasibility of the design of integrated transplanting mechanism.

Research on Potted-Tray Grown Rice Seedling Transplanting by Machine

[Objective] In order to cultivate seedlings that are adaptable to farming system and transplanter, the technology for transplanting potted-tray grown rice seedlings with machine was introduced and studied. [Method] The transplanter-spe-cific seedlings were cultivated with potted-tray, bowl-shaped blanket tray and soft plastic flat plate respectively. The seeding rate and 20-50-day-old seedling height were investigated for the 3 sowing patterns. After the transplanting, the missing transplanting rate, upright seedling rate, seedling injury rate and green-returning pe-riod were investigated. [Result] Nursing seedlings with potted-tray had the advan-tages of saving seeds, high sowing precision, high seedling rate and high seedling rate. The 20-40-day-old seedlings had relatively high leaf age, seedling height and root number. However, 40 d after the transplanting, the growth of seedlings was slowed. The quality difference was smal est among the 20-day-old seedlings that were nursed with 3 different patterns, but since then the quality advantage of pot-ted-tray grown seedlings had been more and more prominent. There was smal dif-ference in quality among the 30-day-old seedlings. However, for the seedlings that were older than 40 d, the transplanting quality of potted-tray grown seedlings was higher than that of bowl-shaped blanket tray grown seedlings and soft plastic flat plate grown seedlings. In addition, the green-returning period of the potted-tray grown seedlings was significantly shortened. [Conclusion] Compared to the bowl-shaped blanket tray grown seedlings and soft plastic flat plate grown seedlings, the potted-tray grown seedlings were more suitable to transplant by machine in the wheat-rice double cropping areas of Chengdu Plain.

Development of single row automatic transplanting device for potted vegetable seedlings

In China,low degree of automation seriously affects the working efficiency and quality in vegetable transplanting.As one of the most important vegetables in China even in the world,tomato was taken as the research object in this study.An automatic single-row transplanting device was designed,based on the statistical analysis of the physical and mechanical properties of tomato seedlings of a typical variety.Based on the technology of mechatronics,the device integrated the functions of transporting seedling tray,automatic seedling extraction and mechanical planting.The kinematics orthogonality solution combined with the dynamic sequence solution method was used to optimize and analyze the kinematic parameters of the automatic seeding mechanism,and the“sickle”trajectory was obtained.According to the position and movement requirement for taking and dropping seedling,the mechanical conditions and the working parameters of key execution parts were obtained by using analytic drawing method to analyze the mechanical condition of seedling collecting mechanism.The transplanting experiment was conducted at room temperature of 25°C,and the age and moisture content of the seedlings were 40 d and 55%,respectively.The results showed that the highest success rate was 92.59%,and the lowest rate of leakage was 23.13%,when the transplanting frequency was 60 plants/min.The lowest success rate was 77.78%,and the highest rate of leakage was 38.75%,when transplanting frequency was 120 plants/min.When the transplanting frequency is between 60-90 plants/min,the device can meet the requirement of high speed transplanting for potted vegetable seedling.

Optimized design and experiment of the three-arm transplanting mechanism for rice potted seedlings

The transplanting arm of two-arm transplanting mechanism is easy to cause seedlings injury and missing due to its faster speed relative to the seedlings.In order to solve the existed problems,a three-arm transplanting mechanism for rice potted seedlings was developed in this study.The developed three-arm transplanting mechanism for rice potted seedling can make the transplanting arm realize special trajectory and attitude through the unequal planetary gear transmission.The kinematic model of three-arm transplanting mechanism for rice potted seedling was established,and the optimal design software was developed.Based on the heuristic optimization algorithm named“parameter guide”,a set of satisfied mechanism parameters required by the rice potted seedling transplanting were obtained.The trajectory and attitude of three-arm transplanting mechanism used for the rice potted seedling were analyzed.Besides,the virtual simulation results were basically consistent with the optimization software results,and the correctness of theoretical analysis and virtual simulation were also verified by each other.When the developed transplanting mechanism picked up the seedling,the velocity of transplanting arm relative to the seedling was reduced by about 30%.The results showed that the injury rate of rice potted seedling transplanting mechanism was 0.04%,the missing rate of seedling was 1.4%,the integrity rate of seedling pot matrix was 96%,and the success rate of picking seedling was 99.92%.

Theoretical analysis and development of a mechanism with punching device for transplanting potted vegetable seedlings

Several studies have indicated that potted vegetable seedling transplanting technology can greatly improve the ability of vegetable seedlings to resist cold,flood,drought,saline-alkali and pests.The existing transplanting equipment mostly adopts mechanical,electrical and hydraulic integration technologies with a complex structure and a high cost.To address the problems of the complex structure and low efficiency of existing transplanting equipment,a rotary transplanting mechanism for potted vegetable seedlings was developed through configuration analysis and optimization design.Through kinematic analysis of the transplanting mechanism,optimization design software was developed,and the parameters were optimized.A mechanism was developed for picking,transporting,hole punching and transplanting potted vegetable seedlings.The virtual simulation results showed that the maximum error of attitudes of the transplanting arm is less than 1.19°and that of the hole punching shovel is less than 1.7°.In this study,perforation,seedling harvesting and transplanting experiments were conducted through a bench test.The results showed that the specific trajectory and attitude of the potted vegetable seedlings transplanting mechanism conformed to the requirements of potted vegetable seedling transplantation and the success rate of seedling picking was 92.4%,which verified the correctness and feasibility of the rotary potted vegetable seedling transplanting mechanism.

Preliminary Study on Optimized Conditions for Dry-cultivated Rice Seedling Planting

The effects of soil moisture content, pot seedling buried depth, and pot seedling height on the survival rate and growth of dry planted seedlings were researched by field experiment. The results showed that the seedling survival rate and growth were enhanced with the increase of soil moisture content after pot seedling transplanting, but there was no significant difference in the survival rate and growth of seedlings with 85% and 100% of soil moisture content. Pot seedling buried depth was one of the important factors affecting the survival rate, and when the pot seedlings were buried 2 cm deep, the seedlings showed high survival rate and excellent growth. Under the same condition of soil moisture content and buried depth, seedlings with pot seedling height of 15 cm had the best survival rate and growth. Therefore, the optimized conditions for dry-cultivated rice seedling planting were soil moisture content of 85%, pot seedling buried depth of 2 cm, and pot seedling height of 15 cm.

Design of a 4 DOF parallel robot arm and the firmware implementation on embedded system to transplant pot seedlings

This paper presents a firmware design and its implementation on a real time embedded system for driving a 4 DOF parallel robot arm.The firmware primarily comprised of two components to produce motion of the robot arm:a)generation of continuous position coordinates and b)generation of actuating signals.These two componentswere processed in two different microcontrollerswith a common communication bus.The position generation algorithm produced and transmitted continuous position data to the motion generation algorithm in the form of G-code strings by reading the input positionswhichwere previously stored by the user in EEPROMmemory of the microcontroller.The receipt of a handshake signal synchronized the data transmission between these components through a communication bus.An LCD display and keypad were used as human-machine interface(HMI)to communicate with the user to set the robot target coordinates.The mechanical structure of the robot arm comprised of multiple links which were actuated by steppermotors.The workspace boundary were sensed by limit switches.The kinematic equations represented the gripper position for the corresponding input joint angles.A microcontroller was used to compute kinematic equations of the robot arm with the help of motion generation algorithm to generate actuation signals for the simultaneous movement of robot joints.The kinematic equations were solved with the dual-core capability of the microcontroller using real time operating system(RTOS),which made the computation faster with an average computation time of 198μs per step.The developed firmware was implemented and tested on a 4 DOF parallel manipulator using embedded microcontrollers for continuous pickup and place of the paper pot seedlings for automating the metering of pot seedlings.The cycle time taken for pickup and dropping of each seedling was 3.5 s with a success rate of 93.3%.

New type of transverse moving box mechanism for pot seedling transplanting machine

The existing moving box mechanism pot seedling transplanting machine on the market moves too fast when the picked seedling is collected,which negatively impacts the seedling picking performance.In order to improve the performance,two types of variable speed continuous moving box schemes were designed in this study.The first scheme was to apply a spiral-gear moving box spiral shaft with sine curve characteristics in the box moving mechanism,whereas the second one was to change the circular gear in the moving box into an elliptical gear with a speed shifting transmission mechanism.The working mechanism of the mechanical structure was analyzed,and the kinematic model was established.A dynamic analysis of the slider mechanism was performed.A virtual prototype was established according to agronomic parameters,and the virtual prototype experiments were conducted in ADAMS.The physical prototype and the high-speed photography experiment were performed on the test bench of a transplanting machine frame.The theoretical analysis,virtual prototype and physical prototype test results were consistent,which verified the validity of the theoretical model,virtual prototype and physical prototype and ensured the feasibility of the system.

Design and test of soft-pot-tray automatic embedding system for light-economical pot seedling nursery machine

Most of the commercially-available pot seedling nursery machines are incompatible with soft-pot-trays and are labor-intensive and low in productivity.A soft-pot-tray automatic embedding system was developed in this study to achieve automatic embedding of the soft pot tray into the hard tray following sowing and covering with soil.A control system was constructed using the Arduino program development environment.An embedded-hard-tray automatic lowering mechanism and conveyor-belt-based pot-tray embedding system were designed.Dynamics analysis was conducted to derive an equation to describe the embedding process of the soft pot tray into the embedded hard tray.A prototype of the soft-pot-tray automatic embedding system was manufactured and tested.The analytical equation suggested that a minimum linear velocity of 0.86 m/s was required for a complete embedding process.The experimental results showed that the embedded-hard-tray automatic lowering mechanism was reliable and stable as the tray placement success rate was greater than 99%.The successful tray embedding rate was 100%and the seed exposure rate was less than 1%with a linear velocity of the conveyor belt of 0.92 m/s.The experiment findings agreed well with the analytical results.The proposed soft-pot-tray automatic embedding system satisfied the technical specifications for a light-economical pot seedling nursery machine.

Design of clamping-pot-type planetary gear train transplanting mechanism for rice wide-narrow-row planting

To design a clamping-pot-type wide-narrow-row pot seedling transplanting(WPST)mechanism with desired spatial beak-shaped trajectory and working posture,a new design method of planetary gear train transplanting mechanism(PGTM)with non-circular gears based on several key spatial poses(position and posture)was proposed.The PGTM was simplified to a spatial open-loop chain with two-revolute(2R)joints.The geometric constraint equations containing only the structural parameters of the chain were then established on the basis of the three key spatial poses,and the homotopy algorithm was used to obtain all the required parameters of the mechanism.In accordance with the parameters obtained,the relative angular displacement relation between the planet carrier and the transplanting arm was optimized,the trajectory of the mechanism was replayed,and the total transmission ratio was determined.The degree of freedom of the spatial 2R mechanism was reduced by attaching to the unequal gear pair,and the transmission ratio was distributed in accordance with the gear type to realize the design of a non-circular gear pitch curve.Lastly,a clamping-pot-type PGTM for rice WPST driven by the combination of planar non-circular and non-conical gears was designed,and virtual simulation and prototype test were conducted.Results showed that the simulation and prototype test trajectories were consistent with the desired trajectory.Under the operating speeds of 50 r/min and 90 r/min,the success rates of seedling picking were 95.32%and 90.15%,respectively,which verified the feasibility of the theoretical method.This method could provide a reference for the design of a spatial PGTM with nonuniform transmission.

Optimized design and experiments of a rotary-extensive-type flowerpot seedling transplanting mechanism

To realize the mechanization of flowerpot seedling transplanting,a creative mechanism to transplant flowerpot seedlings was designed.The mechanism is based on noncircular gear in combination with a transplanting arm equipped with an extensive seedling pick-up device to transplant the flowerpot seedlings from the growing tray to the flowerpot,which in accordance with the transplanting agronomy requirements.The working principles of a theoretical model and kinematic characteristics of the transplanting mechanism were analyzed.The computer-aided analysis and optimization software based on Visual Basic 6.0 was developed and used to obtain a set of special trajectory and attitude parameters satisfying the transplanting operation requirements.The optimized parameters were used for virtual manufacturing and simulation testing of the transplanting mechanism.The virtual prototype testing results are consistent with the theoretical analysis,verifying the structural design validity and rationality.The high-speed photography was used in a bench test of the transplanting mechanism with“Salvia Splendens”pot seedlings as test samples.The trajectory and attitudes of the theoretical analysis,virtual test,and physical prototype test were essentially identical.The bench test results showed that the success rate was 91.67%for the seedling pick-up device penetrating into the root mass at 35 mm,thus,the quality of the extracting seedling was satisfactory.