Vision-Based a Seedling Selective Planting Control System for Vegetable Transplanter

Abstract

Seedling transplanting is an important part of vegetable mechanized production in modern agriculture. After the seedlings are cultivated on a large scale by the nursery tray, they are planted into the field by the transplanter. However, unlike manual transplanting, transplanter is unable to judge the status of seedlings in the hole during seedling planting, which leads to problems such as damaged seedlings and empty holes being picked in the same order and planted into the field, resulting in yield reduction and missed planting. Aiming at this problem, we designed a seedling selective planting control system for vegetable transplanter which includes vision unit, seedling picking mechanism, seedling feeding mechanism, planting mechanism, pneumatic push rod unit, limit sensor, industrial computer and logic controller. We used asymmetrical light to construct visual identification scenes for planting conditions, which suppresses environmental disturbances. Based on the intersection operation of mask and image, a fast framework of tray hole location and seedling identification (FHLSI) was proposed combined with FCM segmentation algorithm. The vision unit provides the transplanting system with information on the status of the holes to be transplanted. Based on the information, planting system chooses the healthy seedlings for transplanting, improving the survival rate and quality of transplanting. The results show that the proposed visual method has an average accuracy of 92.35% for identification with the selective planting control system of seedlings and improves the transplanting quality by 15.4%.

Digital Twins in Plant Factory: A Five-Dimensional Modeling Method for Plant Factory Transplanter Digital Twins

“…Improper use could cause damage and death to plants, while also increasing labor costs and production risks [4,5]. Plant transplantation is a vital link in the production process of plant factories [6][7][8], thus it is crucial to establish a transplanting machine model suitable for the operating environment of plant factories in order to optimize costs and increase efficiency in the planting process.…”

Design and Experiments of a Vision-Guided Integrated Cavity Tray Seedling Culling and Replanting System

“…Tong et al [37] improved the efficiency of seedling replenishment through rational path planning based on a hydroponic leafy vegetable transplanting mechanism. Li et al [38] designed a selective planting control system to select healthy seedlings for transplantation using visual guidance. Various grading and replenishment machines were developed by Visser, Flier, TTA, and Techmek.…”