Development of a precision 3-row synchronised transplanter

Commercial vegetable crop transplanters currently use several unsynchronised planting units mounted to a common transport frame. The objective of this work was to assess the performance of a new transplanting technology to improve the plant placement accuracy and spatiotemporal planting synchronization across adjacent rows, thus producing a grid like planting pattern using adjacent vegetable crop transplanters. The feasibility of synchronisation of adjacent transplanting units for vegetable crops was demonstrated using tomato as the target crop. A colour, digital, high-speed computer vision analysis of the motion and dynamics of the plant trajectories of transplanted tomatoes was conducted. The high-speed video analysis led to the design and testing of an improved plant support mechanism to enhance the control and precision of the transplanting of vegetable crops. The absolute deviation values of the final location in the soil were reduced by approximately 25% for both the right planter and left planter compared to those in previous years. These results serve as the fundamental basis for a mechatronic system that can precisely transplant vegetable crops in a grid-like pattern across rows as a critical first step in a systematic approach to fully automated individual plant care. (c) 2021 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study evaluated a new transplanting technology to improve the accuracy and synchronization of vegetable crop transplanting, achieving a grid-like planting pattern. Through high-speed computer vision analysis and improved plant support mechanism, the deviation values of plant placement in the soil were significantly reduced.