Development of a precision 3-row synchronised transplanter

• Published in: Biosystems engineering 2021-06, Vol.206, p.67-78
• Main Authors: Pérez-Ruiz, Manuel, Slaughter, David C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer vision; High-speed video; Precision agriculture; Transplanter
• ISSN: 1537-5110; 1537-5129
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2021.03.014

Commercial vegetable crop transplanters currently use several unsynchronised planting units mounted to a common transport frame. The objective of this work was to assess the performance of a new transplanting technology to improve the plant placement accuracy and spatiotemporal planting synchronization across adjacent rows, thus producing a grid-like planting pattern using adjacent vegetable crop transplanters. The feasibility of synchronisation of adjacent transplanting units for vegetable crops was demonstrated using tomato as the target crop. A colour, digital, high-speed computer vision analysis of the motion and dynamics of the plant trajectories of transplanted tomatoes was conducted. The high-speed video analysis led to the design and testing of an improved plant support mechanism to enhance the control and precision of the transplanting of vegetable crops. The absolute deviation values of the final location in the soil were reduced by approximately 25% for both the right planter and left planter compared to those in previous years. These results serve as the fundamental basis for a mechatronic system that can precisely transplant vegetable crops in a grid-like pattern across rows as a critical first step in a systematic approach to fully automated individual plant care. •Sustainable agricultural production remains a major challenge for agriculture.•New insights into plant dynamics during tomato transplanting obtained.•Synchronised plant placement in adjacent rows reduces plant-to-plant competition.•Synchronised plant placement facilitates the use of an automatic intra-row weeding.