Development of a Cabbage Loader

Cabbage is one of the most important vegetable in Korea. The cabbage production was mainly based on human labor A comprehensive research fur substituting the human labor by machines has been performed until now. In general, cabbage is cultivated on hillside in Korea. Picking up the harvested cabbages in field and carrying to a vehicle fur transportation are very laborious work. Manual transportation of cabbage is likely to damage the quality and is also a cause to increase the cost of cabbage production. This study was to develop and evaluate a prototype cabbage loader fur efficient and safe transportation of cabbage. The developed loader was a semi-tracked vehicle operated by a hydraulic system, allowing the safe transportation and loading of cabbage in a steep field. The maximum loading weight of the loader was 1.0 ton. By using two sets of safety devices attached to the loader to avoid the roll-over in a steep field, the static rollover slopes were increased up to 34.0% and 37.4% fur the left and the rear direction, respectively The maximum field speed was about 6km/hr with two cabbage pallets of 750kg at a 25% inclined field. The loading capacity of the loader was about 35 pallets/hr when picking up, carrying, and unloading two cabbage pallets for one loading operation. The loading capacity was more than 8 times in comparison with the conventional human labor. The developed loader could be used fur loading and carrying the other vegetables. The study suggested a possible approach for designing the field machines operated on hillside.