Conceptual design of an automation-facilitating tomato greenhouse concept

Conceptual design of an automation-facilitating tomato greenhouse concept

Bunnik, Floris (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering; TU Delft Transport Engineering and Logistics)

Pang, Y. (mentor)
Schott, D.L. (graduation committee)
Lin, X. (mentor)
De Koning, A.N.M. (graduation committee)
Oltheten, W. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics

2023-01-16

Automation in tomato greenhouses is lacking compared with some other crops. The efficiency and consistency of greenhouse operations can be boosted by implementing automation. Therefore, a new concept that facilitates the robotisation of crop-handling tasks is investigated. This concept combines the existing technology of a movable-gutter system with the cultivation concept of a limited-truss tomato. The combination of these two techniques has not been previously explored. For this paper, a generic conceptual design framework was developed which contains a simulation model and an evaluation protocol. In the evaluation protocol a sensitivity analysis and an optimal dimension analysis is performed. Case studies are conducted to evaluate the simulated performance, to examine the capacity of the transport system and crop-handling tasks and to assess the robustness. These case studies prove that the developed framework is generic and all-encompassing. The framework has proven its worth by eliminating erroneous design choices before significant resources were spent. The new concept is promising, as it facilitates automation and has a competitive simulated production. Therefore, it is advised to move on to the next design phase, which should mainly focus on validating the crop-growth model and the preliminary design of subsystems as the transport system and components as the movable-gutter itself. Furthermore, a cost analysis and economic assessment should be conducted.

Greenhouse
Tomato
Simulation-based
Automation
optimisation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1c33d2ba-54a4-4255-a131-493cb82754bb

2026-01-16

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Floris Bunnik