Robotic handling of nursery containers

This research explores the possibility of using a robotic system to handle nursery containers for large scale greenhouse production. Extensive literature review was done focusing on the robot applications in the agricultural industry and the current technology in nursery mechanization. An MTS A-200 industrial robot was used to test the concept of a robotic system to unload/load nursery containers from an extendable belt conveyor. A four degrees of freedom robot manipulator with cylindrical configuration was specified for the nursery robotic system. Computer graphics simulation was performed to study the kinematics of the nursery robot manipulator. Based on the relative position of the robot manipulator to the extendable belt conveyor, four workcells were specified and subsequently simulated. One robot workcell was chosen over the other three based on the robot cycle time and the robot joint motion requirement. The 15.2 seconds cycle time (robot handling two sets of containers) means that the robot should handle eight containers each time in order to keep pace with the potting machine at a potting rate of one container per second. The robot arm was designed and joint drive mechanisms were determined. A three section prototype of the extendable belt conveyor was developed and tested. It was demonstrated that the extendable belt conveyor worked to its expectations.