자동제어식 파종조절장치 개발

Development of Automatic Seed Metering Device

Planting, transplanting, and harvesting are important processes for the successful production of farm products in Korea because those require the high labor intensity during limitted period. Recently, many researches of using automatic control with a microcomputer are carried in the agricultural field, but are not much spread to the seeder development. Automatic sowing technology would be much attractive if there was a way to assure that each seed was count accurately in the seed metering device. Thus, an automatic seed metering device was designed and constructed to be controlled by microcomputer. This device could be improved in not only counting the number of seeds in but also sowing seeds between row spacings. Automatic seed metering device consisted of conveyor belt and temporary storage device. Performance of seed metering device depends on the apparatus including sensor, stepping motor and DC-solenoid. Research contents and results are summarized as follows. 1. The seed metering device involving seed hopper, sorter and temporary storage device was designed and constructed. 2. A seed counting system with six photo electric sensors, designed and built for this project, was adequate for tranferring and counting seeds accurately. 3. Operating algorithm for stepping motor and photo electric DC-solenoid was developed. The Seed metering device proved to be a smooth and accurate operating device using the algorithm. 4. The performance of second prototype metering device was examined with five kinds of seeds ; mung beans, red beans, white beans, black beans and corn to transfer and count the seeds. The error ratio of seed metering was less than 3.5%.