An unmanned rice seeder with WiFi based mobile-control system for drudgery reduction

An unmanned rice seeder (URS) with WiFi based wireless communication system was developed to reduce surface seed dispersion, drudgery, human involvement, Occupational health hazards and environmental pollution. An android mobile phone with WIFI connectivity acts as wireless communication system to control the developed URS with operating range of 144.6 m which was surplus for small farms in hilly terrains of Sikkim. The factors of URS are found to be forward speed (F_s) and hopper fill level (H_L) w.r.t responses of co-efficient of variation of number of seeds per hill (C_v), Seed rate (S_r), hill spacing uniformity (U_s,), missing hill index (MI) and mean hill span (H_s). The optimum results of soil bin study are of F_s and H_L of 2.4 km.h⁻¹ and 75% w.r.t responses of C_v, S_r, MI, U_s, H_s are 0.28, 18.5 kg. ha⁻¹, 7.3%, 91.7%, and 6.4 cm. Test results showed that the seeding performance of developed seeder was similar to manual drum seeder. But, due to higher speed of operation in developed seeder showed better results in field operation. The results from the field evaluation revealed that URS has increase in field capacity of 41%, reduces labor requirement of 50% than manual rice seeder. In economic evaluation URS has reduced cost of operation (₹ ha⁻¹) of 90% and increase net benefit (₹ year⁻¹), Payback period of 61% and 91% over manual rice seeder (MRS). The operator's workload was decreased by up to 95% due to the machine's mobile operation as compared to the manual operation.