Abstract
It has been challenging to design seedling pick-up mechanism based on given key points and trajectories, because it involves dimensional synthesis and rod length optimization. In this paper, the dimensional synthesis of seedling pick-up mechanism with planetary gear train was studied based on the data of given key points and the trajectory of the endpoint of seedling pick-up mechanism. Given the positions and orientations requirements of the five key points, the study first conducted a dimensional synthesis of the linkage size and center of rotation. The next steps were to select a reasonable solution and optimize the data values based on the ideal seedling trajectory. The link motion was driven by the planetary gear train of the two-stage gear. Four pitch curves of noncircular gears were obtained by calculating and distributing the transmission ratio according to the data. For the pitch curve with two convex points, the tooth profile design method of incomplete noncircular gear was applied. The seedling pick-up mechanism was tested by a virtual prototype and a physical prototype designed with the obtained parameter values. The results were consistent with the theoretical design requirements, confirming that the mechanism meets the expected requirements for picking seedlings up. This paper presents a new design method of vegetable pot seedling pick-up mechanism for an automatic vegetable transplanter.
Highlights
Seedling transplantation is an important part of vegetable production: over 60% of vegetable varieties adopt a seedling cultivation method [1]
Robotic seedling pick-up mechanism is widely used and highly practical. It simulates the manual activity of collecting vegetable pot seedlings from a bowl and pushing them into the seedling planting mechanism
This paper explores the design method of the seedling pick-up mechanism with planetary gear train
Summary
Seedling transplantation is an important part of vegetable production: over 60% of vegetable varieties adopt a seedling cultivation method [1]. Robotic seedling pick-up mechanism is widely used and highly practical It simulates the manual activity of collecting vegetable pot seedlings from a bowl and pushing them into the seedling planting mechanism. (2020) 33:63 invented and subsequently developed a seedling pick-up mechanism with a series of rotary noncircular planetary gear trains. The abovementioned rotary seedling pick-up mechanisms, whose simplified model is a two-bar series mechanism, can efficiently pick up seedlings and are highly applicable. Yu et al [13] and Ye et al [17] designed a novel two-bar mechanism based on the given shape of a gear pitch curve in a planetary gear train and obtained the seedling pick-up trajectory. The mechanism was optimized based on the given angle of the seedling pick-up arm and the seedling pick-up trajectory.
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