A specialized picker with lower pick-up height for recovering pruning residues in orchards

Abstract

Most farmers use mulch machine to directly shred the branch pruning residues in orchards, which may cause the spread of diseases and pests to healthy branches. It is a good solution to use a machine to recover pruning residues and then transport them to a safe area for secondary utilization. However, effective collection of these residues still faces many technical challenges. In particular, the pruning residues in young orchards have the characteristics of many branches without secondary branches and close to the ground, it is difficult to collect. In this article, a specialized picker with lower pick-up height is proposed, which is more suitable for collecting pruning residues in young orchards. Firstly, an experiment platform for collecting branches is built. It is found that the pick-up height has a larger effect on the success rate than other factors. Secondly, an optimization platform with a user interface is also developed in Matlab, and the mono-factor analysis method is used to optimize the variable parameters of the mathematical model of spring-finger picker. Then, a set of non-inferior solution parameters is obtained. Finally, a picker on the square herbage baler is selected as an experimental prototype, and a core component Cam track is redesigned and fabricated according to the optimization results. Additionally, comparative tests are conducted between the original picker and the improved picker. The results show the latter is more than 30% higher than the former, even achieves 93.8% of success rate. This article can provide a theoretical basis for designing the branches pick-up device and the design method can also be widely used in other mechanisms of agricultural machines.