08- Farming Mechanism

Background

Agricultural robots, including planting mechanisms, have become increasingly important in modern agriculture, offering innovative solutions to address various farming challenges. These robots are designed to precisely control the planting process, ensuring optimal seed spacing, depth, and placement to optimize crop yields, minimize waste, and enhance efficiency. Due to ongoing labor shortages in agriculture, these robots help automate tasks traditionally performed by manual labor to increase labor efficiency and contribute to higher overall agricultural output from an increase in productivity. Sensor-based planting robots are integrated with data collection and analysis capabilities to analyze soil health, weather conditions, and crop performance for farmers. These sensor-based robots can precisely optimize the use of resources such as water, fertilizers, and pesticides to reduce environmental impact and lower production costs. 

Attached above are two videos showcasing the modern-day use of various types of farming mechanisms. These videos are a bit lengthy but gave our group inspiration to create a small-scale farming mechanism.

Summary 

After many different design iterations, we chose a design that would allow our mechanism to dig a hole in the soil, drop a seed in the hole, and shovel the dirt back to cover the hole. At the same time, our linkage system, attached to wheels, would roll over to a new patch of dirt and restart the process in a new spot. A detailed explanation of our design process can be found in the initial proposal and design process pages. After ensuring through kinematic analysis that our design would work, we started manufacturing the parts we needed for this project. We had multiple prototype iterations and learned lessons from our mistakes until we reached a successful final prototype. 

Image of our initial prototype

Image of our final prototype

Summary Video

Highlights

In our final prototype, we were able to effectively shovel out enough dirt to plant a seed. Our shovel was only able to return about half of the dirt back to cover the seed. Originally, we were able to time our mechanism so that it would roll to the next section of dirt, but our gear had worn out, causing slip. Overall, our mechanism was effective in planting a seed. More on our final prototype can be found in our video.