Design and test of semi-feeding test-bed for peanut pod picking

Abstract: A semi-feeding test-bed was developed to study the working mechanism of the semi-feeding device for peanut-pod picking, and optimize its structure and working parameters. The test bed was mainly composed of a frame, an automatic feeding platform, a clamping-carrying device, a peanut pod picking device, a control system, sensors, a converter motor and a high-speed photography system, with many functions, such as key parameters adjustment and collection, process image acquisition, and plant fresh keeping. The main technical indexes of the test-bed were as follows: the pod-picking roller length was 500, 800, 1 000 mm, the roller diameter was 160, 200, 240 mm, the distance between the center of the back end of the roller and the clamping-carrying chain was 100-150 mm, the peanut pod picking device rotation rate was 200-1 000 r/min, the clamping-carrying chain velocity was 0.5-2.5 m/s. Based on the previous design, this paper mainly focused on the design and analysis of the pod-picking device, the automatic feeding platform, the control system, the clamping-carrying device and the fresh-keeping storage house and so on. Experiments on the plant-feeding number, the included angle between the chain and roll (hereinafter refers to briefly as the included angle), the power consumption, and the high-speed photography of pod picking were carried out by the semi-feeding test-bed, which had not been done previously. The results show that the plant-feeding number has a great effect on both the breakage rate and unpicked rate, while the included angle has a great effect on the unpicked rate, but a little effect on the breakage rate. When the picking roller are fully filled with plants at the smooth working stage, the larger the plant-feeding number is, the higher power consumption is. The high-speed photography experiment reveals the influence between the pod-picking blade and the peanut pods, the separation between pod and vine, and the internal mechanism. Overall, the test-bed can provide effective technical means for the further study on the mechanism of the pod-picking working.