Development of the Low-Carbon Precise Pneumatic Servo Plug Tray Seedlings Machine

This paper aims to develop the low-carbon precise pneumatic servo plug tray seedlings machine. In the mechanism design, a rod-less pneumatic cylinder is selected as the actuator, equipped with a plug conveying platform combined with a needle seeding mechanism, and a soil perforating mechanism. SOLIDWORKS was adopted to design the low-carbon precise pneumatic servo plug tray seedlings machine. Mathematical models of the pneumatic servo system are established and analyzed. The functional approximation method with sliding mode control was formulated to control the designed machine. A PC-based system with MATLAB/SIMULINK was developed to achieve real-time precise seeding process. High precision seeding was realized at a speed of 120 trays per hour, with a single-seeding rate up to 99% and a missed-seeding rate of less than 3%. Also, the feasibility of the system was verified through germination rate experiments. Finally, carbon emissions of this designed machine were calculated. Maximum decreasing carbon emission of 80% compared to motors was achieved by the pneumatic servo plug tray seedlings machine. Therefore, results demonstrated superior performance of the proposed design in terms of seeding accuracy, operational efficiency, and energy consumption, establishing its potential as a viable solution for sustainable and scalable automated seeding applications.