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Conceptual Modeling Automated Seedling Transfer from Growing Trays to Shipping Modules

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Transactions of the ASAE. 37(4): 1043-1051. (doi: 10.13031/2013.28174) @1994
Authors:   H. L. Brewer
Keywords:   Agricultural mechanization, Computers, Robotics, Transplanters, Trees, Vegetables

Automated field transplanters can plant several hundred seedlings per row per minute if the seedlings are presented to the transplanter in modules. Seedlings are grown in trays and transferred to the modules so that each cell in each module has a good seedling. If the operations to transform seeds into seedlings transplanted in fields are automated, then machines to transfer seedlings from trays to modules must be developed. An experimental machine built in 1991 ejected plugs from cells, gripped stems of seedlings and lifted them, transferred seedlings from tray to module, and dropped seedlings into a module. The machine was slow and incomplete. This article reports on a design which was conceptually modeled on a computer to correct the deficiencies of the experimental machine that was build. Projections from the conceptual model indicate that three 200-cell trays of seedlings can be transferred per minute, which is about 80% of the rate required by one field transplanter.

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