• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.213-222
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• 1992

To develop the wireless remote opreating system of walking rice transplanter, this study was carried out for manufacturing the wireless remote control system acting upon the transplanter. The first report of this study contained about the construction and operating method of a developed remote control system for 2-row walking type transplanter. It is the second report about the field test for an experimental transplanter being attached a wireless control system and for a conventional transplanter. The test was executed to investigate the characteristics of velocity, rectilinearity, turning time, interval of roots and of rows, and field capacity in accordance with various engine speeds for an experimental transplanter. The measurements of this test were compared with those of the conventional transplanter. The obtained results were as follows : 1. The operating velocity of the experimental transplanter was faster than the conventional one when the high speed range of the engine but the variances were very large. 2. The rectilinearity, interval of raws and of roots, and the turning time of the experimental transplanter was inferior to the conventional one at some speed ranges of the engine. 3. Field capacity of the experimental transplanter was superior to the conventional one at high speed of the engine. 4. There were some disadvantages for the experimental transplanter to operate, because it was constructed without any aid devices, such as float and hydraulic system for instance. But if the remote control system of this study equip at the modern walking transplanter, it will be improved and utilized without defects which was revealed from this test.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1997.06c
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• pp.238-246
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• 1997

This study was conducted to develop a robotic transplanter for bedding plants. The robotic transplanter consisted of machine vision system, a manipulator, a gripper and plug tray transfer system. The performance of the robotic transplanter was tested and compared by two different transplanting methods, which were to consider the leaf orientation of seedlings and not to. Results of this study were as follows. (1) A cartesian coordinate manipulator for a robotic transplanter with 3 degree of freedom was constructed. The accuracy of position control was $\pm$1 mm. (2) The robotic transplanter with the machine vision system, the manipulator, the gripper and the transfer system was developed and tested with a shovel-type finger. Without considering the orientation of leaves, the success rates of transplanting healthy cucumber seedlings in 72-cell and 128-cell plug-trays were 95.5% and 94.5% respectively. Considering the orientation of leaves, the success rates of transplanting healthy cucumber seedling in 72-cell and 128-cell plug-trays were 96.0% and 95.0% respectively.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.31 no.2 s.115
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• pp.88-94
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• 2006

The market of rice transplanter has already been changed for riding and to be turned large size of chassis. Because an automation is rapidly expanded, It is strongly need to analyze a mechanism and develop a hydraulic circuit. In this study, we analyzed the mechanism of working equipment of rice transplanter for riding and developed hydraulic circuits. We proposed the operating mechanism of rice transplanter for riding through the mechanistic analysis of working equipment. And the simulation and experiment were performed. In order to up and down the working equipment of rice transplanter for riding, we designed the mechanism which was installed hydraulic circuit and hydraulic cylinder, and it was manufactured. The pressure of developed hydraulic circuit was set by 800 $N/cm^2$. In the field testing, the hydraulic response presented at 50 msec in the maximum driving velocity, 0.8 m/sec of rice transplanter for riding, and it was well performed. The results of experiments showed the system characteristics sufficient to use as the hydraulic mechanism for a rice transplanter for riding.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.58-65
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• 1980

Sinkage differences between the wheels of a transplanter which are caused by the different hard pan of fields and land preparation affect the field performance of a rice transplanter. In this experiment the relationships between the sinkage differences of the wheels of a transplanter and the planting distance, planting angle, planting depth and deviation from a straight transplanting line were investigated. The objective of this experiment was to obtain some basic informations for the effective use of the rice transplanter . The results of this experiment are as follows. 1. Transplanting distance became shorter as the sinkage differences increased. This effect was greater on the side of the transplanter with a shallower sinkage. 2. The depth of transplanting increased as the differences in the depth of sinkage increase for the side with the deeper sinkage. An opposite trend was observed for the side with shallower sinkage. 3. The angle of transplanted seedlings from the vertical portion increased slightly as the sinkage differences increased. The variation in results were greater from the side of the transplanter with deeper sinkage than with shallower sinkage. 5. The best postures of planted seedling were found when the water depth was 3 cm for the side of transplanter with deeper sinkage and 4 cm for the shallower sinkage side. The relationships between the postures of planted seedling and water depth. , or $y=67.62 + 10.69x-1.76x^2$ for the side of transplanter with deeper sinkage and $y=66.64+11.62x-1.50x^2$ for the side with shallower sinkage, were found from this experiment.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.325-332
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• 1997

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.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.277-284
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• 1998

This study was conducted to develop m automatic pot-seedling transplanter for plant factory. The transplanter consists of a gripper, row-spacing control device, nursing tray transfer system, growing trough transfer system, and gripper moving device. The gripper picks up pot-seedling. The gripper moving device moves the gripper between nursing tray and growing-flat. Nursing trays are moved to workspace by the nursing tray transfer system. The growing trough transfer system was developed to move growing trough to workspace. The row-spacing control device was used to adjust the distance between adjacent plants traversely. The results of this study are as follows. The transplanting capacity of the developed transplanter was 7.1 seconds per cycle or 1.18 second per pot-seedling. Successful planting was 98.9% without seedlings and 95.8% with seedlings.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1997.12a
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• pp.392-400
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• 1997

This study was conducted to develope the machine vision system of a robotic transplanter for bedding plants. Specific objectives of this study were 1) to get coordinates of the healthy seedlings except empty cells and bad seedlings in high-density plug tray, and 2) to get the angle of the leaves of the healthy seedlings to avoid damage to the seedlings by gripper. The results of this study are summarized as follows. (1) The machine vision system of a robotic transplanter was developed. (2) The success rates of detecting empty cell and bad seedlings in 72-cell and 128-cell plug trays were 98.8% and 94.9% respectively. (3) The success rates of calculating the angle of leaves in 72-cell and 128-cell plug trays were 93.5% and 91.0% respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1997.12a
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• pp.88-98
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• 1997

This study was conducted to develope the gripper of a robotic transplanter for bedding plants. Specific objectives of this study were 1) to develope the gripper for plug tray seedlings and 2) to find the suitable finger type for transplanting. The performance of gripper was tested and compared by two different transplanting methods, which were to consider the leaf position of seedlings and not to consider. The results of this study are summarized as follows. (1) The gripper of a robotic transplanter was developed and tested with 4 different finger type. (2) The shovel type finger was suitable for transplanting with the least percent of damaged seedlings.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.2 s.109
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• pp.81-88
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• 2005

Manual transplanting Chinese cabbage needs 184 hours per ha in Korea. Mechanization of Chinese cabbage transplanting operation has been highly required because it needs highly intensive labor during peak season. This study was conducted to developed walking-type Chinese cabbage transplanter. In order to find out design factor of the transplanter, a kinematic analysis software, RecurDyn, was used. The prototype was tested in the circular soil bin and its operating motion was captured and analyzed using high speed camera system. Prototype was one row type which utilized original parts of engine, transmission and etc. from walking-type rice transplanter in order to save the manufacturing cost. Success ratio of pick-up device of hole-pin type and latch type were $96.0\%$ and $99.2\%$, respectively. which was highly affected by feeding accuracy of feeding device of seedling. Transplanting device of the prototype produced a elliptic loci which were coincident with those produced by the computer simulation. Prototype proved good performance in transplanting with mulching and without mulching operation, either. Working performance of prototype was 22 hours per ha and operation cost of the prototype was 961,757 won per ha. So, it would reduce $88\%$ of the labor and $29\%$ of operation cost.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.255-263
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• 2013

Purpose: It is not easy to drive a rice-transplanter avoiding underlapped or overlapped transplanting in paddy fields. An automated guidance system for the riding-type rice-transplanter would be necessary to operate the rice-transplanter autonomously or to assist the beginning drivers as a driving aid. Methods: A prototype of guidance system was composed of embedded computers, RTK-GPS, and a power-steering mechanism. Two Kalman filters were adopted to overcome sparse positioning data (1 Hz) from the RTK-GPS. A global Kalman filter estimated the posture of rice-transplanter every one second, and a local Kalman filter calculated the posture from every new estimation of the global Kalman filter with an interval of 200 ms. A PID controller was applied to the row-following mode control. A control method of U-turning mode was developed as well. A stepping motor with a reduction gear set was used to rotate the shaft of steering wheel. Results: Test trials for U-turning and row-following modes were done in a paddy field after some parameters have been tuned at the ground speed range of 0.3 ~ 1.2 m/s. The minimum RMS error of offset was 3.13 cm at the ground speed of 0.3 m/s while the maximum RMS error was 13.01 cm at 1.2 m/s. The offset RMS error tended to increase as the ground speed increased. The target point distance, LT also affected the system performance and PID controller parameters should be adjusted on different ground speeds. Conclusions: A target angle-based PID controller plus stationary steering angle controller made it possible for the rice-transplanter to steer autonomously by following a reference line accurately and even on U-turning mode. However, as condition in paddy fields is very complicated, the system should control the ground speed that prevents it from deviating too much due to ditch and slope.