Development of a Robotic Transplanter for Bedding Plants(II) - Transplantiing Gripper -

육묘용 로봇 이식기의 개발(II) - 이식 그리퍼 -

The use of a robotic transplanter reduces the labor requirement in the greenhouse by carrying out repetitive tasks in an accurate and reliable manner. The transplanter manipulates seedlings by means of end-effector. The end-effector is designed differently from an industrial robot because it manulates biological seedlings of variable size, shape, position, and orientation. This study was conducted to develop an end-effector of a robotic transplanter for bedding plants. The development of an end-effector included selection of the best finger type for the transplanting operation. The performance of developed end-effector was tested and compared with two different transplanting schemes depending on the leaf-orientation consideration. The end-effector developed in this research reliably handled seedlings during transplanting task. Results showed that the shovel type finger was suitable for transplanting with the damaging seedlings.