Development of Precision Production Robot for Flower and Vegetable Seedling (Part 2)

Transplanting Robot for Young Seedling Using Urethane-cube Nursery System

Abstract

In order to manufacture a trial transplantation robot, young seedling grown in cell-tray were examined on its physical properties and its shape. The results showed that the transplantation was difficult in case of using the existing soil in seedling culture. Therefore, a transplantation robot to transplant the seedlings discriminated by image processing program and algorithm, which was reported in part 1, from cell-tray to seedling pot was developed using urethane-cube as seedling culture materials. It was constructed by a 3 orthogonal linear axes manipulator where an end-effector was fixed on the end of height direction axle. The end-effector was composed of a tweezers type holding section and hole-covering section. The result of transplantation examination showed 91% of transplantation success.