Design, Development and Implementation of Automatic Transplanting based on Embedded System for use in Seedling Transplanters

Abstract

Abstract Hand transplanting of vegetable seedlings is always been a time consuming and labourious activity which often leads to muscular fatigue. Use of hitech instrumentation increased to achieve precision and automation in agricultural operations. At present the transplanting is done manually which accounts for large amount of hand labour and time. To ensure precision and timeliness in operation, an automatic transplanting based on embedded system for use in seedling transplanters was developed. The developed system consists of feed roller, pro-tray belt, a pair of L-shaped rotating fingers, embedded system, DC and stepper motor. The pro-tray on the belt moves by DC motor whereas, the stepper motor was used to actuate the metering shaft to and from. The ground wheel used to rotate the rotating fingers which eject the seedling from the pro-tray into the delivery box. The performances of the developed system was tested rigorously at four different operating speeds (vf) (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 km/h) and three angles of pro-tray feed roller (00, 300, 450) for attaining optimum plant to plant spacing in soil bin. The result indicated that percent transplanting and plant to plant spacing was found optimum when speed of operation was 2.0 km/h and angle of pro-tray feed roller was 300. The average plant spacing, transplanting efficiency, furrow closer, angle of inclination and miss planting was 600 mm, 91.7%, 90.3%, 18.30 and 2.1%, respectively. The developed system ensures the precision by sigulating the placement of seedlings at optimum spacing. It also enabled the optimum transplanting rate, the ability to transplant at higher speeds and maintaining proper plant to plant spacing.