Development of Gantry Systems for Strawberry Cultivation

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In order to save labor in strawberry cultivation, two types of gantries, for a single-span greenhouse and a wide-span greenhouse, a rotary tiller, ridger, a fungicide sprayer , workbenches for picking operation and harvesting robot were manufactured and tested. Furthermore, a prototype truck controlled by a programmable device to transfer the gantry to a neighboring ridge in the multi-span greenhouse was made. The following are main results of this study.1.The working performance test of the gantry showed that with a 7 kW motor for driving operation machine, a running speed of gantry for rotary tillage at less than 30cm /s and that for 25 cm high ridging work at less than 14 cm/s, the gantry works flawlessly. The soil pulverizing performance, theoretical field capacity, and ridge shaping accuracy of the gantry were equivalent to conventional operation.2.From the results of spraying experiments, it was observed that the gantries could accomplish effective spraying with less fungicide consumption and the necessary time was reduced to 58 % compared with manual spraying. In addition, physical burden for picking operation was deceased by using the workbench. Furthermore, from the viewpoint of the man-machine system, psychological burden of the gantry operator was clarified by the chaos analysis.3.As a consequence of wheel derailment tests, the several advantages of side-flanged wheel compared with both-flanged wheel were clear : (1) restrain of frame deformation ; (2) adaptation to some track deviation ; (3) low power consumption of driving motor.4.Strawberry harvesting robot which consisted of 4 degrees of freedom cartesian coordinate manipulator, a hook type end-effector, and a color CCD camera was developed, and its performance was confirmed.The experiments above-mentioned have clarified the basic characteristics of the gantry systems. The practical application of the gantry systems is now being envisioned.