Verification of applicability of ABB robots for trans-planting seedlings in greenhouses

Abstract

155Trans-planting seedlings of flowers and vegetables in greenhouses can be ranked among the stationary cropping processes. When tomatoes are growing, it is necessary to replant them from the pre-planting containers to bigger silvicultural packets after approximately 15 days. This process is provided by the staff without any mechanisation in the small and middle businesses. The seedlings are taken out by hand together with the ball of soil from the preplanting containers and then they are planted into bigger silvicultural packets with a dibber. in special growing seedlings businesses (Montano Valtr, s.r.o. and Zahradnictví Lysá nad Labem-Litol), flowerpot machines are used. These machines stream the replant process. They fill in the silvicultural bin with the soil and then dig a hole. The whole process is easier but the manual work is necessary even here because the seedlings have to be put in manually. This paper is aimed at this work.The fact that industrial Robots and Manipulators (henceforth iR+M) can be used for this operation has been pointed out by a number of authors. it was already Krutz (1983) who recommended the application of iR+M for trans-planting seedlings, mainly due to the monotonous character of this work.The research on the development of a robotic transplanter and its components began several years ago. Hwang and Sistler (1986) developed a commercial pepper transplanter using a basic robotic manipulator. Simonton (1991) developed an endeffector for the handling and manipulating of geranium cuttings. He controlled the position, velocity, and force of the end-effector to minimise damage to the petioles and main stem. An end-effector which utilises a rack and pinion mechanism was developed by Kim et al. (1995). The end-effector converted the rotational motion of the stepping motor to the clipping motion of the finger. Kutz et al. (1986) dealt with an experiment aimed at the verification of applicability of the PUMA industrial Robot (henceforth iR) for trans-planting seedlings of tomatoes and marigolds from pre-planting containers with 392 partitions into planting containers with 36 partitions. The objective of this experiment was to define a working cycle of the robot, check its performance, and develop an appropriate end-effector. The verification tests showed that the Abstract: The article deals with the verification of applicability of different types of ABB industrial robots for transplanting seedlings. initial hypothesis was formulated at the beginning namely that the robots with full rotary series and parallel kinematical structure can be employed in the operation of trans-planting seedlings. Testing was performed on real types of robots iRB 1400, iRB 140T and iRB 140B, and using model application. The robot iRB 340 was tested in virtual simulation only. Based on the measurements, it was found out that all real robots tested are able to perform the operation of seedlings trans-planting involving 36 plants with the cycle duration below 2.7 min and at 100% success rate. Within the given rang...

Effect of Compound Biochar Substrate on the Root Growth of Cucumber Plug Seedlings

“…where BD means bulk density, g/cm 3 ; m 1 is the weight of ring cutter filled with the substrate, g; m 2 is the weight of the ring cutter, g; V is the volume of ring cutter, cm 3 ; and ω is the mass water content of the substrate sample, g/kg. Determination of porosity: firstly, a certain amount of the prepared substrate was weighed after being soaked in the water for 24 h; then we put the wet substrate in the gauze, and let it drain freely for 24 h, after that, we moved it from the gauze and weighed it; finally, the substrate was put into the oven to dry to constant weight at 105°C, so we got the porosity as…”

“…where AP is aeration porosity; WP is water-holding porosity; P is whole porosity; VR is void ratio; W 1 is the weight of the sample which was soaked for 24 h, g; W 2 is the weight of the sample which was drained freely for 24 h, g; W 3 is the weight of the sample which was baked into a constant weight, g; and V is the volume of the sample, g/cm 3 . Determination of pH and EC value: 50 g substrate was taken out as a sample from each substrate, which was crushed and put into the breaker; then, distilled water was used to wet the sample to keep their water content around 55%.…”

“…Xia proposed that the bulk density and porosity of the substrate should be appropriate, so the substrate had the enough aeration porosity for the plants to ensure the efficiency of air exchange, and the water-holding porosity would be suitable at the same time so that the substrate could retain enough water for the plants to absorb [31]. In general, the suitable parameters of substrate for plant growth were bulk density at 0.1~0.8 g/cm 3 , whole porosity at 54~96%, and void ratio at 0.25~0.5 [32]. Based on Table 1, it was apparent that only the void ratio of T 5 treatment was not within the above requirements.…”

“…The automatic pick-up device has developed rapidly in order to cooperate with seedling transplanting technology to achieve higher economic benefits. However, most of the pick-up devices are still in the experimental stage because the mechanical characteristic of the seedling is difficult to meet the requirements of automatic seedling picking [2][3][4]. Besides, the success ratio of seedling picking is low and the seedling substrate is easily damaged during the seedling picking process if the mechanical characteristic of the seedling is not good, especially when picking at a high speed, so it is important to cultivate the seedlings with good mechanical properties which can meet the requirements of the high-speed picking [5,6].…”

“…Biochar is a carbon-rich product obtained by pyrolysis of corncob, straw, peanut shell and other biomass [12,13], and it is a good medium for soil improvement, which can promote the growth of plants [14]. Previous studies pointed out that biochar had the following remarkable functions: (1) It can reduce soil density and bulk density [15], (2) it can improve soil pH [16] and enhance the cation exchange capacity (CEC) in soil [17], (3) it can improve soil porosity, so as to enhance water and fertilizer conservation performance [18,19], (4) it has a large specific surface area, so the C/N ration of soil will be increased, so as to improve the absorption capacity of nitrogen and other nutrient elements [20,21], and the large surface area will promote the growth of microorganisms [22]. Today, most of the substrate used for plug seedling raising were composed of peat, vermiculite and perlite, and previous research proposed that this kind of substrate had relatively good mechanical properties [23], but the cost of this substrate was high and some farmers were reluctant to use this substrate.…”