A mechatronic seed metering control system for improving sowing uniformity of planters

One of the most crucial aspect of a planter's performance lies in its ability to distribute the seeds at uniform spacing within the row. Conventional planters experience non-uniformity in seed spacing due to ground wheel skidding and high vibration prevalent with their ground wheel-driven mechanical transmission units. In addition, the seed spacing adjustment process in these machines is also very tedious and time-consuming. In this study, an embedded mechatronic seed metering control system that uses an electric motor instead of a ground-engaging wheel to drive the seed metering units was developed to address the challenges associated with conventional planters. This system was mainly comprised of an electric motor, motor controller, relay switches, microcontroller board, radar sensor, and 12 V battery. The developed system was incorporated with a conventional inclined plate planter, and the test planter's performance was evaluated in electric motor-driven (EMD) and ground wheel-driven (GWD) modes. The field-testing results demonstrated a significant improvement in the seed spacing uniformity with the EMD mode compared to the GWD mode, through an increase of 8.12–21.32% in the quality of feed index and a reduction of 11.82–19.73% in the precision across a speed range of 1.6–4.8 km/h. These findings confirm the effectiveness of the newly developed control system in addressing the problem of non-uniform seed spacing in conventional planters.