Development of the order throwing maching for rice seedlings sprouted in the cell-tray

A manipulator type of the order-throwing machine was designed for the rice seedlings sprouted in the cell-tray at an industrial nursery. The manipulator has two degrees of freedom, one horizontal movement and one vertical movement. Its hand is the clip type gripper. The machine is operated by a person to determine the trajectory planning of the traveling path. The manipulator is controlled by a single-chip microcomputer and can automatically finish the processing work: gripping and pulling up rice seedlings from the plastic cell-tray and orderly throwing transplanted rice seedlings into paddy through the chutes. The construction and working principle of the order-throwing machine were introduced. The photo-electricity sensor (or electromagnetic sensor) was used to supervise whether rice seedlings arrived at the position of rice seedlings being gripped or not and the experiments were done in the laboratory. The two sensors have precision position inspection ability, that can operate at different fixed distances. The new scheme was put forward as a proposal to use a motor driving elliptic cam instead of an electromagnet to open the gripper. The whole design scheme was also made as a suggestion that two independent manipulator units can be merged together to make use of one horizontal movement mechanism. The experiment of chutes for separating rice seedlings was done on the test carriage in the soil bin laboratory. As a result, the rice seedlings passed through the chutes well. The 7-curve chute design meets the agronomic requirements of the rice seedlings orderly throwing transplant.