Mechatronics Design and Kinematic Simulation of a Tripteron Cartesian-Parallel Agricultural Robot Mounted on 4-Wheeled Mobile Platform to Perform Seed Sowing Activity

Abstract

In recent years, agriculture in Peru has had a constant increase in its added value, and in order to promote its growth, the use of technology such as robotics is important. For this reason, the innovative research was carried out in 2021 under the supervision of the School of Mechatronics Engineering at Ricardo Palma University consisted in the design of a mobile agricultural robot that can be configured to plant different types of seeds by being able to vary the sowing distance using a parallel manipulator, as well as being proficient to dig into the ground up to 50 mm using a modified drill that has the function of releasing the seed using 2 servo motors. In addition, the robotic system consists of 2 mechanical elements: the car and the tripteron. The first one consists of 4 gearmotors as well as it is responsible for the movement, and the second one has 3 degrees of freedom as well as uses 3 stepper motors of 20 Nm. This study presents mechatronics conceptual design and kinematic analysis simulation, where SolidWorks 2020 is used to design the 3D mechanical structure and Matlab for the simulation and testing of the robot operation. The robot is pretended to be applied to greenhouses in Cusco by August 2022 because there is a serious problem of vegetable production. In conclusion, favorable results were achieved; consequently, the next step of this project is to add a camera in order that it can recognize for itself the route and where to sow seeds.