Journal of Researches in Mechanics of Agricultural Machinery

Journal of Researches in Mechanics of Agricultural Machinery

Study of Seed Spacing Uniformity and Seed Falling Dynamics of a Pneumatic Planter under Laboratory Conditions Using Machine Vision

Authors
Zahra Abdolahzare
Saman Abdanan Mehdizade
Abstract
Seed spacing uniformity is an important criterion in evaluating seeder performance ; so that, it is affected by the vacuum pressure value of the pneumatic seeder, proportional to seed weight and size, the physical properties of the seeds, the forward speed, quality of seed, and seed fall speed. Therefore, in this study, the effects of two levels of actual forward speed and three levels of vacuum pressure for maize and castor seeds were evaluated to determine seed falling speed using free fall equations (first method) and seed displacement during consecutive frames by image processing (second method) The acceleration values obtained for two mentioned methods were equal to 9.47 m.s-2 and 15.75 m.s-2, respectively. To confirm accuracy of the values obtained, locations of seeds were calculated using the equation of -time-position for the both methods and it was compared to the obtained values of image processing. According to the correlation coefficient of 0.89 and 0.99, and root mean square error of 3/09×10-2 and 1/22×10-2, for the first and second method, respectively, the second method shows better results than the first method.
Keywords
Seed spacing uniformity-Image processing-Seed fall dynamic.-Pneumatic planter-