A Robotic Pepper Transplanter
Heon Hwang, Fred E. Sistler
GRAD. STUDENT
ASAE
ABSTRACT
robotic manipulator with 5 deg of freedom and a
A gripper was mounted on a commercial pot-type
mechanical transplanter which had been modified to
match the manipulator's pick-and-place operation. The
system used an 8-bit microcomputer as a master control
for the manipulator.
The manipulator picked the pepper plants individually
from the trays and dropped them through a guide hole
on the transplanter. After the plant left the guide hole,
inclined press wheels covered the plant roots with soil
while a kicker plate kept the plant properly oriented.
The trajectory of the gripper tip was selected to
perform the transplanting task rapidly without the
manipulator colliding with itself or other parts of the
transplanter. The rectangular coordinates for each joint
position of the manipulator were represented by a joint
variable. Three techniques of solving these joint variables
were studied and applied. The manipulator was
controlled by a pre-programmed set of joint move
instructions.
INTRODUCTION
There is a very large potential for robotic applications
in agricultural operations, particularly where there is a
labor shortage or the operation is potentially hazardous
to humans. This could include transplanting, chemical
application, fruit and vegetable harvesting, and food
processing. Transplanting was chosen because: (a) it is a
well-defined repetitive task, (b) it is a common operation
used with many vegetable and field crops, (c) there is not
always a dependable labor supply for transplanting, and
(d) complex sensors such as vision or force (touch) with
their corresponding control systems would not be
required.
The requirements for a robotic manipulator to
perform the transplanting task are: high speed, high
spatial resolution and repeatability, capable of working
in a hostile (dirty, humid, and hot) environment, and a
suitable gripper which can handle the plants efficiently
without damaging them. It would also be desirable to
have interchangeable grippers for use with different
types and sizes of transplants.
A pepper transplanter is pulled behind a tractor and
powered by the press wheels through a chain and
sprocket mechanism. Most commercial transplanters use
Article was submitted for publication in June, 1985; reviewed and
approved for publication by the Power and Machinery Div. of ASAE in
October, 1985.
The authors are: HEON HWANG, Graduate Student, and FRED E.
SISTLER, Associate Professor, Louisiana State Agricultural Center,
Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station, Agricultural Engineering
Building, Baton Rouge, LA.
2 © 1986 American Society of Agricultural Engineers 0883-8542/86/0201 -0002$02.00
ASSOC. MEMBER
ASAE
a pot-type transplanting placement mechanism. The
transplants come in trays containing a series of
uniformly-sized cells with one or two plants in each cell.
An operator sitting on the transplanter picks the
transplants from the tray cells and places them in the
transplanting mechanism. A one row transplanter
requires one or two people to handle the transplants.
According to performance trials in the Department of
Agricultural Engineering at LSU (Wright and Way,
1982), the average transplanting rate with a pot-type
transplanter was 31 plants/min with one person, and 62
plants/min with two persons per row.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this research were:
1. Modify a commercial transplanting machine for
use with a robotic manipulator.
2. Design the control algorithms for the manipulator
to perform the transplanting tasks.
EQUIPMENT
The equipment consisted of a Model 3000 mechanical
transplanter (Mechanical Transplanter Company,
Holland, MI), a Rhino XR Series Mark II manipulator
and controller (Rhino Robots, Champaign, IL), an
Apple He microcomputer, and some integrated circuits
to monitor the distance travelled and control the plant
spacing.
The transplanter (Fig. 1) was modified for use with the
robotic arm. The basic functional units of the model
3000 one-row transplanter are: a rotating plant tray
holder with four vertical trays, a four-cup carousel, a
furrow opener shoe, a floating plant kicker, and two
press wheels. An operator's seat is mounted on the rear
Fig. 1—Unmodified transplanter.
APPLIED ENGINEERING in AGRICULTURE
of the transplanter. The plants are picked from the plant
box and placed into the carousel. A mechanical plant
spacing mechanism consisting of the cam, gears, chains,
and a spacing sprocket powered by the press wheels
synchronizes the opening and closing of the carousel
cups with the kicker operation. The plant drops through
the guide hole into the opener shoe. It is pushed out of
the shoe by the floating kicker. After the plant leaves the
opener shoe, the press wheels cover the plant's roots with
soil while the kicker holds the plant upright.
An Apple He microcomputer was used for
programming and communicating with a Mark II
controller containing its own Intel 8748 microprocessor.
The Apple lie and the Mark II controller communicate
through an RS-232C interface. The Mark II can control
up to eight motors and monitor six interrupts. Micro-
switches connected to the interrupts can be attached to a
maximum of six joints to serve as reset and/or limit
position detectors. The motors and drive systems are all
contained within the body of the manipulator. Each
articulation, except the wrist joint, is activated by a joint
motor connected through a gear reducer to a sprocket
and chain drive. The specified lifting capacity with the
arm fully extended is 22.25 N and the gripping force is
4.45 N.
The Rhino SX Series Mark II robot is a computer-
controlled mechanical arm having five degrees of
freedom and a gripper (Fig. 2). Each manipulator joint
uses a "bang-bang" control system and is moved by a 12
VDC servo motor with two-phase, incremental optical
encoders for position feedback. As each motor shaft
rotates, the microprocessor in the controller monitors the
changes in the status of the two photo transistors on the
encoder and counts the number of holes and the
direction of rotation to determine the joint position. Four
of the joint motor encoders have six pairs of slots on each
encoder disk for a joint position resolution of 0.14 deg for
the base, and 0.11 deg for the other joints. The gripper
motor and wrist rotate motor encoders have two pairs of
slots each to give a position resolution of 0.24 deg.
PROCEDURE
The seat was removed from the transplanter. A small
Fig. 2—Robotic manipulator.
Vol. 2(l):May, 1986
Fig. 3—Modified transplanter with horizontal trays and manipulator.
platform was mounted in its place to support the
computer and the manipulator's controller. The four-
cup carousel and the mechanical plant spacing
mechanism were also removed. The manipulator was set
in place of the carousel. It dropped the plants directly
into the kicker shoe. The vertical tray holder was
replaced by a flat platform to hold the trays in order to
better utilize the working space of the manipulator (Fig.
3). Transplanter movement through the field was
simulated by a rotating wooden disk mounted on a
variable speed electric motor. A series of small magnets
were mounted on the outer edge of the disk. A magnetic
proximity detector sent an electrical pulse to a counting
circuit every time a magnet passed in front of it. The
plant spacing could be determined by presetting a
reference count in the pulse counting circuit. The
counting circuit was used to activate the manipulator
releasing the plant, and to turn on a dc motor driving the
kicker arm and plate in the base of the furrow opener
shoe. When the proper plant spacing was reached, the
manipulator dropped the plant through the guide hole
into the opener shoe. The kicker plate pushed the plant
out of the opener shoe while keeping the plant stem
vertical. If the transplanter was travelling too fast for the
manipulator to react, a signal was sent to the operator to
slow down. He was also notified if the travel speed could
be increased.
The workspace may be defined as the volume which
the gripper can reach with a particular orientation. For
the SR Mark II manipulator, all of the joints except the
gripper rotary joints have constraints on their movements
because of the manipulator's structure and the length of
the control wires connected to the joint motors. These
constraints become more complex when the intermediate
and final states of the link structure are considered. The
size and position of the trays were determined from the
desired grasp and drop configurations of the
manipulator for the efficient use of the workspace and
the overall travel amount of each joint. Two tray
positions were considered: inclined and horizontal. Due
to the structure of the linkages, the actuating sequence of
the motors, and the amount of motor travel between the
path nodes, the horizontal setting was more efficient for
this manipulator.
Optimization of the path of a manipulator may be
performed by minimizing the move of each joint motor or
the travel distance between the initial and final states of
3

Fig. 4—Picking and moving plant to drop position.
the gripper end. The travel amount of each joint motor
can be varied depending on whether or not each joint is
coupled. The trajectory of the manipulator end can be
affected by this joint coupling property, the ways of data
transfer, and the control methods for the joint move. The
XR Series Mark II manipulator has coupled joints,
requires serial data transfer, and uses the "bang-bang"
control method. The order of actuating the joint motors
and the amount each joint moves at one time affects the
gripper trajectory. If the joint motors have large
differences in speeds, the travel of each joint will be the
more important factor. The path of the manipulator had
to be planned such that the manipulator did not collide
with itself or with other parts of the transplanter. To
minimize the path of the gripper, the manipulator
needed to follow a straight line trajectory. This would
require several intermediate node points in the path or
velocity control for each joint. A node point is an
intermediate point through which the gripper end must
pass between its beginning and ending points. A nearly
straight line trajectory and efficient use of the workspace
could be achieved by introducing node points. However,
node points were not used because they slowed the speed
of the arm movement and reduced the overall
transplanting rate.
The manipulator must pick a plant from a tray
containing a series of cells with a plant in each cell and
transfer it to the drop position without damaging the
plant (Fig. 4). For the pepper transplanter the tasks may
be defined as: approach plant, pick plant, lift plant,
approach drop position, release plant, and push kicker
arm.
For the horizontal setting, the adjustment of the pick,
lift, and drop positions and the gripper approach angle
based on the geometric configuration of the linkage and
the trajectory of the end are used to avoid collisions
without using node points. At the "lift" and "drop"
positions, the gripper angle was decreased to avoid a
collision between the gripper and the tray and to increase
the tray areas by reducing the required drop area. The
following states of the gripper were selected to perform
the transplanting task.
Pick: 65 mm above the top of the cell at a 45 deg angle
downward approach.
Lift: 25 mm towards the base motor origin from the
pick position at a 225 mm lift height and 60 deg
downward approach.
4 APPLIED ENGINEERING in AGRICULTURE
Drop: 160 mm from the base motor origin at a 75 mm
drop height and 75 deg downward approach.
The overall gripper path was selected for the efficiency
of the joint motor drive and minimum computer memory
requirements.
The shape of the gripper was adjusted to account for
individual variations among the plants. The gripper
structure was adjusted to accommodate the plant foliage
and stems hanging on the gripper and the accumulated
manipulator position errors from each move. The
maximum opening of the gripper was restricted to the
width of a tray cell to avoid accidentally picking a plant
in an adjacent cell. A spongy material covered with vinyl
tape was attached to the face of the grippers to avoid
damaging the plant stems. A circular plate was attached
to the gripper to provide a constant gripping area
regardless of the angle of the gripper approach.
PROGRAMMING THE MANIPULATOR
Since the XR Series Mark II manipulator does not
have any feedback from its environment, all of its moves
had to be stored in the computer's memory. All of the
data for all of the joint moves were computed before the
actual transplanting tests. The data was stored in a disk
file. When a test was ready to be conducted, the data was
read into the computer's memory. This way, the
computer was not required to perform any joint move
calculations during the actual transplanting. It had only
to monitor the plant spacing and transfer the joint data
to the manipulator controller.
The data for the joint moves can be obtained from an
inverse kinematic solution technique (Paul et al., 1981
and Denavit et al., 1955) or a differential transformation
technique (Paul et al., 1981 and Pieper, 1968) with an
extended Jacobian using a modified general Gauss-
elimination or a geometric analysis. For an inverse
kinematic solution technique, the proper choice of the
joint position variable is necessary because the geometric
property of the intermediate links gives two possible
solutions for the humanoid type structure. The
characteristics of the trigonometric function should be
considered to void degeneracy (Paul, 1982). A
differential transformation technique with an extended
Jacobian can also be used for the velocity control of each
joint and to follow a straight line trajectory. A geometric
analysis is relatively simple and requires less computing
time compared to the other techniques.
The Inverse Kinematic Solution Technique
The independent coordinates are set up at each joint
axis of the manipulator. Each coordinate has one
prismatic or rotary joint variable. A coordinate
transformation is used to transform unit vectors of one
coordinate frame to those of the other. Each coordinate
system may be chosen arbitrarily to perform the
transformation most easily.
Given a target position and orientation of the gripper
end in the ground coordinate system, n transformation
equations can be obtained from an n deg-of-freedom
manipulator. The solution is obtained sequentially by
isolating each variable and multiplying by the inverse of
the preceding joint transformations. The corresponding
elements of each transformation equation yield 12 non-
trivial equations. The proper equations are selected to
obtain the solution. To obtain a unique solution without
degeneracy, the trigonometric properties must be
considered in conjunction with the geometric
configuration of the manipulator.
The Differential Transformation Technique
with an Extended Jacobian
For any position, a total transformation from the
ground coordinate system to the gripper and coordinates
can be represented as a function of each joint variable.
From the known initial state of the manipulator
structure, a starting transformation through the linkage
coordinates can be obtained. A transformation of the
target state is determined by a combination of
translations and rotations of the ground coordinates to
the desired target coordinates.
Each desired joint variable movement is obtained from
solving the linear matrix equations consisting of the 12
by n extended Jacobian, the n by 1 matrix of the desired
joint variable movement, and the difference of the total
transformation matrix (12 by 1) between the initial and
target states. If a manipulator has fewer than 12 deg of
freedom, the matrix equation is an over-constrained case
with twelve equations and n variables. If the final state of
a joint is radically different from its initial state, the joint
moves may need to be divided into segments to properly
trace the gripper path.
Geometric Analysis
A geometric analysis can be applied to a simple six
deg-of-freedom manipulator. This can be extended to a
structure having more than six deg of freedom. However,
the over-constrained joint variables must be defined and
the appropriate intermediate results from the
geometrically specified equations must be chosen. Based
upon the computing speed and the procedure, this
technique is very efficient and simple to use for this type
of manipulator.
The joint move data generated by the three methods
was compared, and was almost identical in all three
cases. The inverse kinematic solution technique was used
to generate the joint move data for the manipulator.
RESULTS
Three kinds of pepper plants (Jalapeno, Pepperone,
and Bell peppers) grown in a greenhouse for one month
were used to test the robotic transplanter. The
transplanter was tested with each type at the maximum
simulated transplanting speed. None of the plants were
damaged by the gripper.
Because of the low power and speed of the joint
motors, the transplanting rate was not as fast as for a
conventional transplanter. Depending upon its location
in the tray, it took seven to nine seconds for the
manipulator to transplant one plant. Nine seconds was
chosen to maintain a uniform spacing. This gave a
Vol. 2(l):May, 1986
planting rate of slightly more than six plants/min.
Assuming a 45 cm plant spacing a transplanter can be
driven at a maximum speed of 0.84 km/h with a single
human operator on the transplanter. With the present
manipulator, the maximum transplanter ground speed is
0.16 km/h.
An average of one plant per tray was missed due to
gripping errors caused by the random location of the
plants within the cells. Because of the accumulated
resolution errors over the tray, a partial reset of the
manipulator was required between each tray.
CONCLUSIONS
The robotic transplanter should be relatively
inexpensive compared to the other manipulators
operated in manufacturing. Sophisticated features like
force control for the gripper and a vision system to guide
the manipulator to the plants are unnecessary. The
structure of the manipulator can be simple, but it needs
high speed and high resolution. A humanoid type of
manipulator like the XR Series Mark II produces
position errors too large for this application without
undergoing intermediate resets, and high torques on the
intermediate joints. A four deg-of-freedom, two gripper
manipulator with rotary joints at the base and wrist and
two intermediate prismatic joints can achieve at least 50
to 60% of the human performance rate, which is 3 to 4
s/plant. Each gripper can handle 15 to 20 plants/min,
for an overall planting rate of 30 to 40 plants/min. Also
sixteen trays can be loaded at one time. To use the
manipulator with various types of plants, an
interchangeable set of specialized grippers would be
desirable. Because of the high temperature, humidity,
and dusty environment, the control unit and the
manipulator would have to be protected, and the control
unit may need to be cooled or at least insulated from the
heat.
References
1. Wright, M. E. and R. T. Way. 1982. Unpublished experiment
report, Agricultural Engineering Department, Louisiana State
University.
2. Paul, R. P., B. Shimano and G. E. Mayer. 1981. Kinematic
control equations for simple manipulators. IEEE Transactions on
System, Man, and Cybernetics. SMC-11(6):449-455.
3. Denavit, J. and R. S. Hartenberg. 1955. A kinematic notation
tor lower-pair mechanisms based on matrices. ASME Journal of
Applied Mechanics. 215-221.
4. Paul, R. P. 1982. Robot manipulators: Mathematics,
programming, and control. The MIT Press. 50-62; 78-83.
5. Paul, R. P., B. Shimano and G. E. Mayer. 1981. Differential
kinematic control equations for simple manipulators. IEEE
Transactions on System, Man, and Cybernetics. SMC-11(6):456-460.
6. Pieper, D. L. 1968. The kinematics of manipulators under
computer control. Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford
University, Memo AI-72:65-71.
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