Optimal design and experiment of hybrid-driven five-bar flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism

Abstract: Flower potted-seedling transplanter is usually a complex system of cylinder, hydraulic rod and electromagnetic valve, and its high price brings impediment for its promotion. Utilizing a single mechanism to achieve the kinematics requirement of seedling transplanting can be very difficult. Hybrid-driven mechanism can not only have the high transmission efficiency and carrying capacity as the single degree-of-freedom mechanism, but can also have the high flexible degree as the multi degree-of-freedom mechanism. Aiming at simplifying the potted-seedling transplanting mechanism and adding the flexibility of kinematic design, a hybrid-driven five-bar mechanism was proposed to realize the flower potted-seedling transplanting. The trajectory of the mechanism was proposed according to the work requirements and a mathematical model of hybrid-driven five-bar flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism was built. Aiming at the minimum angular velocity fluctuation of the variable speed motor, the parameters of the mechanism were optimized through genetic algorithm toolbox of MATLAB. The rack location of mechanism was set as (0, -150) and (-267.20, 61.87) based on the optimization results of genetic algorithm. The bar lengths of five-bar mechanism were 152.80, 324.55, 336.56, 100.40, 302.60 and 341.00 mm. A three-dimensional model of flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism was built, the kinematic simulation of mechanism was carried out by ADAMS software, and the correctness of the mechanism's optimization results was verified through kinematic simulation. A control system of the hybrid-driven five-bar flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism was designed and the position mode of servo motor was adopted in order to achieve the precise position control required by the mechanism. Meanwhile, the design of the control system realized the requirements of synchronous control and real-time match control in flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism. The structures of the five-bar mechanism and transplanting arm mechanism were designed and the parts of these mechanisms were machined, and then a prototype was assembled to carry out the experiment research of flower potted-seedling transplanting. Through the experiment, the height of flower transplanting trajectory was measured as 265 mm. When the transplanting claw was picking up the potted-seedling, the azimuth angle was 140°, the swinging angle was 6.92° in the process of claw entering the potted-seedling, the swinging angle was 6.27° in the process of claw leaving the potted-seedling, and the width of buckle was less than 3 mm. When the transplanting claw was planting the potted-seedling, the azimuth angle was 90°, the swinging angle was 13.19° in the process of claw entering the potted-seedling, the swinging angle was 4.19° in the process of claw leaving the potted-seedling, and the vertical trajectory height was longer than 40 mm. The average successful rate of 5 transplanting experiments was 87.16% which indicated that hybrid-driven five-bar flower potted-seedling transplanting mechanism can realize the flower potted-seedling transplanting work. Meanwhile, the upright degree and success rate of picking up and planting the flower potted-seedling were ensured in the process of transplanting work. The application field of hybrid drive is extended in this article and a new choice for the design of automatic flower potted-seedling transplanting equipment is provided as well.