TY - JOUR
T1 - A string twining robot for high trellis hop production
AU - He, Long
AU - Zhou, Jianfeng
AU - Zhang, Qin
AU - Charvet, Henry J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research presented in this paper was partially supported by S.S. Steiner, Inc. , the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Hatch Funds ( WNP0745 and WPN00728 ), Washington State University Agricultural Research Center (WSU-ARC) and WSU Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems (CPAAS) . Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of S.S. Steiner, Inc., USDA or WSU.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - The hop plant is usually trained to grow on strings in commercial production. String twining is a labor intensive task in high trellis hop fields, and there is a high demand from industry to have the operation mechanized. In this study, an innovative string twining robot, comprising end-effectors for knot tying, string feeding, and trellis wire capturing was designed to perform this task autonomously. A laboratory-scale, proof of concept prototype, was fabricated to validate the performance and effectiveness of this robotic device and associated control algorithms. Functionality assessment tests verified that the string feeding end-effector could feed 6m length of string with acceptable variation. The trellis wire capturing end-effector could functionally achieve the required procedure for continuous twining. The comprehensive twining test proved that the integrated twining robot took approximately 11.2s to coordinate all three end-effectors to complete one string twining cycle with a moving forward speed of the mobile platform at 0.19ms-1. At this speed, the developed prototype robot achieved 97% of successful rate. The laboratory test results indicated that the developed prototype robot has the potential to be implemented for high trellis hop twining task.
AB - The hop plant is usually trained to grow on strings in commercial production. String twining is a labor intensive task in high trellis hop fields, and there is a high demand from industry to have the operation mechanized. In this study, an innovative string twining robot, comprising end-effectors for knot tying, string feeding, and trellis wire capturing was designed to perform this task autonomously. A laboratory-scale, proof of concept prototype, was fabricated to validate the performance and effectiveness of this robotic device and associated control algorithms. Functionality assessment tests verified that the string feeding end-effector could feed 6m length of string with acceptable variation. The trellis wire capturing end-effector could functionally achieve the required procedure for continuous twining. The comprehensive twining test proved that the integrated twining robot took approximately 11.2s to coordinate all three end-effectors to complete one string twining cycle with a moving forward speed of the mobile platform at 0.19ms-1. At this speed, the developed prototype robot achieved 97% of successful rate. The laboratory test results indicated that the developed prototype robot has the potential to be implemented for high trellis hop twining task.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.compag.2015.12.012
DO - 10.1016/j.compag.2015.12.012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84952802360
SN - 0168-1699
VL - 121
SP - 207
EP - 214
JO - Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
JF - Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
ER -