Development of New Pot-seedling Thinner Controlled by Micro-computer (Part 1)

Design concept and outline of the device

Abstract

For the automatic thinning at raising seedlings in vegetable farming, we developed a new pot-seedling thinner, in which a micro-computer and a photo-sensor were elaborately coupled. This device was attached to seedling boxes prepared for a transplanter, and consisted of a stem-sensor, the selection system of healthy stems, the cutting system of stems, and the control system of the whole device.
The results are as follows. The sensitivity limit of the stem-sensor is about 0.05mm, which is available for the actual stem discriminating operation.
The selection system operates effectively when stems are raised systematically.
The Knife-cuttion system requires stem interval more than 5mm.
This report describes the design concept and outline of the device. The performance of the stem-sensor and the results of the discrimination experiment will be published in the second report, and the performance of the cutting system of stems and the results of the thinning experiment will be published in the third report.