Design and test of a tree-climbing and pruning robot

Abstract

In view of the problems of manual pruning, such as time-consuming, labor-intensive, low efficiency and low degree of automation, the structure and working principle of the robot for tree-climbing and pruning were studied. Finding the problems in the process of product design, analyzing and defining them, transforming them into the standard mode of solving problems, and using TRIZ theory according to the essence of contradictions to solve the contradictions one by one. The virtual prototype was created to carry out the interference analysis and kinematics simulation analysis of the whole machine. The robot for tree-climbing and pruning was designed by modular design method, which can automatically climb to a certain height to realize the function of pruning and cutting the top of the tree trunk. The duty cycle of the motor output is gradually adjusted by PID algorithm to make multiple motors work synchronously and keep the robot stable in the up-tree pruning process and down-tree process. The robot was made and tested. The experimental results show that the diameter of climbing trunk is 100 mm∼300 mm, and the climbing speed is 1 m/min. It can be used for tree-climbing, pruning lateral branches and cutting main trunks of high-straight trunk trees. It can be self-adaptively held, fall-resistant, obstacle-crossing, and manual operate to improve efficiency.