Design and Testing of a Clamping Manipulator for Removing Abnormal Plants in Rape Breeding

Aiming at the time-consuming, laborious, and inefficient process of removing abnormal rape plants during breeding, combined with the agronomic requirements for planting rapeseed, a clamping manipulator was designed. This manipulator is mainly composed of hollow splints, grip-force sensors, connecting rods, cylinders and other components. Additionally, a removing test platform was built. Single-factor and Box-Behnken experiments were conducted. Taking the output air pressure, pulling angle and pulling speed as the test factors, the rape uprooted removal rate, rape removal breakage rate and pulling force were the test indicators. Mathematical models for multiple regression were established separately for each evaluation index, and analysis of variance was conducted. Objective optimization was performed using the Numerical component to obtain the optimal combination of operating parameters: output air pressure of 0.47 MPa, pulling angle of 68.8° and extraction speed of 8 cm/s. The field validation test showed that the uprooted removal rate was 83.33%, the removal breakage rate was 6.67% and the pulling force was 84.9 N at the output air pressure of 0.5 MPa, pulling angle of 70° and pulling speed of 8 cm/s. The validation test values are in good agreement with the parameter optimization values, indicating that the parameter optimization model is reasonable.