ROBOTIC TRANSPLANTING OF BEDDING PLANTS: SIMULATION AND VALIDATION (APPLICATION, GREENHOUSE, COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN)

LAWRENCE JON KUTZ, Purdue University

Abstract

Greenhouse production of flowers, fruit and vegetables is a very labor intensive industry and presents a number of potential applications for robotics. The goals of this research was to study the feasibility of using a robot for transplanting bedding plants. As a first step, the transplanting work cell and a Puma 560 robot were modeled on a commercial computer-aided design system. A robot simulation software package was then used to program the robot off-line and to simulate the motions required by the robot in the transplanting task for four different work cell configurations. Two simulation studies were conducted, to obtain estimates of the cycle time required to transplant 36 seedlings from a 392-cell plug flat to a 36-cell growing flat, and to obtain cycle times for a maximum and minimum distance case in the transplanting of a single seedling for each work cell configuration. Simulated robot cycle times correlated within (+OR-)10 percent of the times measured using the actual robot. In the second phase of the project, a specialized seedling gripper was designed, built and tested with the robot. The Puma 560 robot equipped with the seedling gripper was then used to dibble the growing flat and transplant tomato and marigold seedlings from a plug flat to a growing flat. After initial refinements to the robot control program, the robot was able to transplant better than 95 percent of the seedlings it attempted to transplant, with no apparent damage to the seedlings. The robot cycle time to transplant one 36-cell growing flat with the revised control program was 3.3 min.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Agricultural engineering

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