Abstract
Aiming at decreasing the component complexity and cost of flower transplanting machine, an integrated transplanting method for picking and planting flower seedlings was proposed, and a hybrid-driven five-bar parallel mechanism was designed. A “beak-shaped” trajectory was designed for integrated transplanting requirements, and meantime, either the posture requirements of transplanting claw were determined. Based on the transplanting trajectory of the mechanism, a corresponding mathematical model for solving the link parameters was established, and then the five-bar mechanism was divided into two bar groups, optimization was conducted in two steps based on genetic algorithm and NSGA-II algorithm. Consequently, the optimal solution of the hybrid-driven five-bar parallel mechanism for flower seedling transplanting was obtained. Compared with similar designs, the trajectory displacement of the proposed mechanism is larger in the condition of smaller link size, which indicates that the mechanism can effectively decrease the machine size. The real-time controllable motor angular acceleration fluctuation is smaller and the commutation times are less, which has the advantage of reducing the difficulty of the mechanism control system. Subsequently, the correctness of the design method is verified by kinematics simulation. Finally, the synchronous linkage motion control methods of the two motors were designed, a transplanting experiment of the prototype was carried out, the picking success rate had reached 90%-93.4% and transplanting success rate was 80.5%-86.9% during experiment, which showed that the integrated operation of picking and planting flower seedlings can be realized by the proposed mechanism. Keywords: hybrid-driven mechanism, mechanism optimization, integrated operation of picking and planting, synchronous linkage motion control DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20201302.5187 Citation: Zhao X, Zhang X S, Wu Q P, Dai L, Chen J N. Research and experiment of a novel flower transplanting device using hybrid-driven mechanism. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2020; 13(2): 92–100.
Highlights
The flower industry has become an emerging industry, in which the technology for flower transplanting reduces the growth cycle, helps to ensure uniform crop quality and increases production and income[1,2,3]
Countries with high degree of agricultural mechanization have developed some equipment for transplanting flowers
Using a puma560 robot as a carrier, KUTZ L J designed a special seedling gripper based on CAD, this gripper installed on the robot could achieve the transplanting of bedding plants but the efficiency was too low[4]
Summary
Which has high automation level and efficiency but poor versatility. To achieve the integration of picking and planting, it is necessary to cooperate with Mayer-its special pot supply machine[6]. It has the advantages of stable operation, convenient manufacture and low cost and the characteristics of a full servo-driven mechanism that can achieve complex motion rules and flexible outputs[15,16]. The author had achieved the function of flower plug seedling picking by the hybrid-driven five-bar mechanism[17]. Based on hybrid-driven mechanism, this paper aimed to realize integrated operation of picking and planting flower seedlings, the kinematics rules, structure parameters and motor control parameters of the mechanism were optimized according to the new functional requirements. This research achieves the required kinematics trajectory, at the same time, compared with the mechanism which only realized the function of seedling picking, the link parameters in this paper are more compact and the motor motion stability is better
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