A new Robotic solution for autonomous clipping of seedlings

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Indoor farms and greenhouses across North America use vegetable and fruit seedlings that are sprouted in specialized propagation plans. The propagation plans produce 140 billion seedlings each year. The focus of the current project is to automate the labor-intensive task of clipping seedlings during propagation. The clipping is a manual task of putting a rubber band or a plastic clip around the plant main stem and a wooden stick to provide additional support to the plant and avoid damages during transportation. The clipping task involves a human worker (farmer) to stretch a rubber band or squeeze a plastic clip open and put it around the stem while he/she is bending or kneeing on the floor or reaching across a 1.5 m wide table. This is a physically demanding and painstaking task that takes a high toll on body due to an awkward body posture for an extended period of time. It is also one of the most time consuming and laborious part that creates a bottleneck in the entire propagation process. The clipping is currently performed manually across all propagation facilities and the objective of this project is to develop an innovative solution for autonomous clipping of seedlings. The results from this project will benefit the industrial partners of the project, the province of Ontario, and the greenhouse industry as a whole through direct cost saving, avoid work-related injuries, job creation, enhance competitiveness, and advancement of new knowledge and technologies in robotic agriculture. The project provides an enriched environment for high-value training opportunities in post secondary education in robotics, software engineering, and machine learning.