Optimising Motor Control in Actuator Alignment

Abstract

The automation of replanting seedlings into bigger trays (transplanting) has been a major industrialisation step in the horticultural sector. Modern machines are abundant in large companies and are quite effective, but they are very expensive both in purchase and maintenance. With major clients taking these costs for granted, designers have not stopped to consider ways to alleviate them. This work introduces an affordable electronic system that makes transplanters wireless, allowing for hot-swappable actuators and thus greatly reducing the cost of technicians and downtime as well as procurement. The expensive servo motor drives are replaced by dedicated microcontrollers, allowing the actuators to make their own decisions based on the constraints imposed by various standards of tray sizes and other circumstances. A method is presented to derive the most favourable trajectories, which are then enforced on the system through a closed-loop feedback system. The resulting performance approaches that of the system's predecessor, but at a much more reasonable price. This makes transplanters more affordable for small companies, allowing a broader market to reap the harvest of technological development and increasing worldwide horticultural yield as a result.