Modified Design of a Precision Planter For a Robotic Assistant Farmer

1-3-Motivation of study and problem statement 
The need for a customized planter to be attached to a wheeled mobile robot for Robotic 
Assisted Farming project, has been seen. The implement attached to the robot can affect its 
performance in navigation. So an implement (planter) was designed to be attached to the mobile 
robot to perform seeding during autonomous farming. With design and development of such a 
customized planter comes a series of challenges, depicted below. 
1. Mobile robot is an electric powered machine with limited pulling force compared to 
regular tractors used for faming activities. This planter must be designed in optimum 
manner, so that it needs minimum drag force, and consumes minimum power. Besides, 
commercial planters come in a series of row planters; but in this case only one or two row 
planters are needed. 
2. Due to power limitations, which mentioned above, not more than two row planters can be 
attached to the mobile robot. So a customized attachment mechanism is needed in order 
to attach two row planters to the mobile robot.

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3. In regular planters, hydraulic power is used for lifting mechanism, fans and vacuum 
pumps. Hydraulic systems are heavy and not suitable for an electric powered robot. So 
another substitution for this source of power should be designed to lift the planter and run 
the vacuum system.
4. The pneumatic precision seed metering system needs power to rotate the singulator disc 
with a speed proportional to the forward speed of the planter. In commercial planters, all 
row planters are attached together, and the power is transmitted from a drive wheel to a 
common shaft and then to each singulator using chain and sprocket. In the developed 
planter, a new method is used and the power is transmitted from press wheel (packer 
wheel) to the singulator disc. 
Beside the challenges mentioned above, other efforts have been done to increase the 
quality of seeding, such as optimization of the packing force and normal force on gauge wheel 
and disc to improve seed germination.