Visual servoing-based pneumatic hair transplantation mechanism for robotic FUE surgery

Hair transplantation surgery is an effective solution for hair loss problems,among which follicle unit extraction(FUE)surgery is more widely used and favored.At present,most hair transplantation surgeries still rely heavily on manual operation by doctors and very few hair transplantation robots with complex structures have been introduced.This paper proposes a pneumatic hair transplantation mechanism for FUE surgery,equipped with a camera,capable of automatically performing both hair implantation and extraction with airflow.This pneumatic method eliminates the complex needle structure,has the function of temporarily storing the follicles inside the needle,thus facilitating the automation of transferring follicles from extraction to implantation.Then a visual feedback system is proposed to accurately position the follicles during the transplantation.The experimental results show that average distance deviation between the actual and target positions is 0.6128 mm and the average deviation of hair implantation depth is 1.7176 mm,which verify the feasibility of the proposed system.

Development of transplanting manipulator for hydroponic leafy vegetables

The production of hydroponic leafy vegetable plug-seedlings uses coco-peat as culture substrate in South China.Coco-peat has lowered density than peat-moss,and the friction between substrate block and pickup tool is small.So,it is hard to pick up in mechanism transplantation.In order to increase the friction,the existing transplanting manipulator had relatively complex structures.To simplify the structure of transplanting manipulator and improve the stability of picking up substrate block,four stainless steel fingers with rectangular cross-section were used in this research.A vertical driving was used to realize the coupling effect that could insert and shrink at the same time,by applying different combination of constraints to the steel fingers.This could increase friction between the steel fingers and the substrate block,and then enhance the stability of the substrate block.Different combinations of constraints were applied to the rectangular stainless steel fingers(3 mm×0.8 mm).The working videos of steel fingers were taken by high-speed photography.High-speed motioned analysis software was used to acquire and analyze traces of steel fingers movements.When the length which top end of the steel fingers moved outward(M)is equal to 1.5 mm,the length which guiding part widened(N)is equal to 1 mm,the shrinking distance of steel fingers is 4.2 mm.In this research,16-day hydroponic leafy vegetable plug-seedlings were used for performance,which cultivated with coco-peat substrate with the moisture in the substrate at 81%.The transplanting manipulator was attached to a Denso robotic arm to conduct transplanting performance test.When the shrinking distance of steel fingers increased from 0 mm to 3.2 mm and the inserting angle decreased from 80°to 77°,the lifting force of substrate block increased by 118%from 1.45 N to 3.16 N.However,excessive shrinkage stirred the substrate block,which would reduce the friction between the substrate block and pickup parts and lowered the lifting force of pickup part in the substrate block.The experimental results also demonstrated that when the shrinking distance of the steel fingers reached 3.2 mm and the root distribution rate reached 46%,the success rate of transplantation was 80%.When the leafy vegetable plug-seedlings root distribution rate reached 92%,the success rate of transplantation was 96.67%.The degree of root distribution rate was positively correlated with the transplantation success rate.Therefore,in order to ensure an acceptable success rate of transplantation,the root distribution rate of leafy vegetable plug-seedlings should be at least 90%.This study provides a technical reference for developing simplified transplanting manipulator that can be used to transplant the hydroponic leafy vegetable plug-seedlings with coco-peat as the culture substrate.

Development of a metering mechanism with serial robotic arm for handling paper pot seedlings in a vegetable transplanter

This paper describes the development of an automated metering mechanism for vegetable transplanter.It consisted of a 3-DOF serial robotic arm and an automatic feeding conveyor.The robotic arm was developed to pick and drop tomato seedlings raised in biodegradable paper pots.The volume of each pot was 50 cm^(3)(3.5 cmdiameter and 5.2 cmheight)with a maximumtotalweight of 47 g including potmix and seedling.Amatrix type feeding conveyorwas developed to convey the pot seedlings to a predefined positionwhere the robotic armcould pick up these seedlings one by one.LDR(Light Dependent Resistor)-LED(Light Emitting Diode)sensing unit was used to perform the intermittent movement of the conveyor.The developed system was evaluated under both laboratory and field conditions.The robotic arm was able to pick and drop 20 seedlings per minute and its effective cycle time per handling one seedling was varying from 2.5 to 3.1 s.Power consumption of the conveyor of the developed system and the robotic arm was 18 W and 16 W,respectively.The conveying,metering and overall efficiency of the developed metering mechanism under laboratory condition were 96.83%,95.91%and 92.86%,respectively as compared to 94.7%,93.28%and 88.33%,under field condition.The developed robotic armbasedmeteringmechanismwas simple,light inweight and effectively handled the pot seedlings without damage and would thus help in mechanizing transplanting of vegetable seedlings.