Modified Design of a Precision Planter For a Robotic Assistant Farmer

6-2-Contributions 
At the end, it can be said that, the process of the design of a customized planter with 
smaller draft force was performed successfully. The contributions for this research project are 
listed below: 
1) A customized planter is designed and fabricated that can be attached to Grizzly 
mobile robot. 
2) The developed planter requires less draft force and it can be easily pulled the mobile 
robot for autonomous farming.
3) Improvements were performed on the planter for higher yield and better 
germinations. These improvements include the substitution of the down forces with 
optimized forces for better germination, and also the optimization of the press wheel 
down force system to get fewer change in the down-ward force. 
The differences between the developed planter and the existing CNH planter that are 
noticeable in Figure 5-2 are listed briefly below. 
1) Totall draft force (for the whole planter) of the planter (≈500 N) is lower than CNH 
planter (≈900-1300 N)
1
due to all the changes that has been done and listed below. 
2) Only one disc and one gauge wheel are used in developed planter instead of double 
disc and double gauge wheel in CNH planter. 
3) Different disc and tilt angle for the disc coulter is used here to get smaller draft force. 
1
Reference: Data unofficially provided by CNH Saskatoon. 

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4) Different depth changing mechanism is used in the developed planter. (See figure 3-5 
and 3-7) 
5) No seed covering discs are used in developed planter. 
6) Transmission power to rotate the singulator disc is taken from the press wheel here. 
7) To reduce the change in down force a longer press wheel links is used here.
8) Hand operated lifting mechanism is used in the developed planter here. 
9) A connecting linkage to attach the two planters to the mobile robot is designed.