Positioneringsmodul till omplanteringsrobot för skogsplantor

Sammanfattning: This master thesis is part of the development of a new industrial machine. The machine is a fully automated transplanting machine for the forest industry and will be used by nurseries around the world. Nurseries grow seedlings and sell them when they have grown enough to be planted in the ground. The machine being developed moves plants from a tray with small cells to a tray with bigger cells. This is done via a number of grippers mounted on a bar. The machine picks a whole row from the input tray. It then takes a picture to determine which plants should be planted and which are of inadequate quality and should be disposed of. How the approved plants should be positioned in the outgoing trays to fill them in the best way is what this thesis tries to examine. Problems arise because some cells can not initally be filled in the tray due to disposed seedlings. Different positioning strategies have been examined to find an algorithm which fill all cells in the most time efficient way. Through simulations an algorithm has been chosen and thereafter implemented in PLC code. The simulations have also given interesting information on how the machine should be built in order to achieve higher efficiency. This thesis is an example of how simulations can be used as a tool in early stages of machine development.