Automation in Plant Factory with Labor-saving Conveyance System

Plant factory basics and facts were reported by Takatsuji (1996). The majority of current cultivation methods in plant factories are floating system where the cultivation panels float on water in a container. The panels are removed from the harvesting side by hand, while the new panels are pushed on by hand from the planting side. At the moment, the work is basically done by workers inside the cultivation room. Therefore, it is necessary to solve hygiene issues such as bacteria prevention, and safety considerations for work on the upper shelves. Also, it is important to solve the problem as to how to reduce labor running costs (Now, 5 workers / 1,000 plants, 5,000 yen / day). Low cost artificial type plant factories with total system control were discussed by Takayanagi (2000). As one way to solve these problem areas such as hygiene, employee safety, and labor cost management, the automatic culture bed transportation system was fabricated and examined. The automation of plant factory operations was discussed by Ogura (2011). The automated cultivation transport system reported in this paper utilizes the transportation technology as a labor saving structure, intended to innovative and revolutionary closed plant factory systems. To achieve labor saving employee reduction and safety for nutrient film technique (NFT) multistage cultivation, the system requires automated culture bed loading from the planting side, automated unloading from the harvesting side, and automated transportation for moving forward to erase the unused spaces. When the system is in use, the only employees work is to set the culture beds on the warehouse entrance plate for planting. Thus, this system was designed to keep employees safe from working in high-places and to reduce the labor cost of transportation from the planting entrance to the harvest room. Also, hygiene management can be improved and maintained because employee entrance into the cultivation room is limited. The adopted conveyor equipment in this system has the latest network and control system that can communicate the cultivation shelves operation conditions in real time. Operation instructions and status confirmations such as continuous automated delivery, and trouble detection can be remotely controlled from a centralized location, because the position of the cultivation shelves can be managed. These methods combined are considered to offer labor savings benefits. From the above items, significant running cost reductions can be achieved, and operating a mass production plant factory becomes feasible.