• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.183-188
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• 2010

It is necessary to develop an efficient and affordable cooling technology and apply the practical system to rural farmhouse, control to adequate growth environment by adjusting temperature of root zone. A study on managing medium temperature of the hydroponics for strawberry cultivation was conducted and feasible evaporative cooling system for the media cooling were as follows: Characteristics of temperature drop were investigated for the evaporative cooling devices using microporous film duct, felt mulching on media surface, and water permeable sheet in culture tank. The evaporative device with water permeable sheet in culture tank was the most efficient and economic on media cooling system.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2014

Oriental melon (Cucumis melo var. makuwa) should be cultivated on the soil and be harvested. It is difficult to find because it is covered with leaves, and furthermore, it is very hard to grip it due to its climbing stems. This study developed and tested oriental melon harvesting robots such as an end-effector, manipulator and identification device. The end effector is divided into a gripper for harvest and a cutter for stems. In addition, it was designed to control the gripping and cutting forces so that the gripper could move four fingers at the same time and the cutter could move back and forth. The manipulator was designed to realize a 4-axis manipulator structure to combine orthogonal coordinate-type and shuttle-type manipulators with L-R type model to rotate based on the central axis. With regard to the identification device, oriental melon was identified using the primary identification global view camera device and secondary identification local view camera device and selected in the prediction of the sugar content or maturity. As a result of the performance test using this device, the average harvest time was 18.2 sec/ea, average pick-up rate was 91.4%, average damage rate was 8.2% and average sorting rate was 72.6%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.11b
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• pp.489-497
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• 2000

Since Chinese cabbages weigh 3 to 5kgf and are big in size at the time of harvest, handling operations such as harvesting, loading and unloading including transportation require the highest labor demand among all other cultivation processes. Recently, though several cabbage harvesters were developed in Japan and Europe, those harvesters were not suitable for Chinese cabbages cultivated in Korea because of the size and shape. The cabbage harvester is almost meaningless without any proper cabbage piling and pallet unloading mechanism. Most harvesters developed so far adopted a sort of slide and free falling way in collecting cabbages into the pallet. Three or four labors are usually required for cleaning incoming cabbages and loading those in the pallet. Because of the required time for piling cabbages without severe damage and the required space capacity to carry empty and loaded pallets, harvesting speed should be adjusted in accordance with time required for consecutive operations. Up to now, any automatic or semi-automatic collecting device has not been developed in the world to pile cabbages on the layer one by one into the pallet in the ordered way with little damage and to unload pallet from the harvester continuously during the harvest process. To compromise system expenses and function, Semi-automatic cabbage piling and pallet unloading mechanism was devised and it required one labor. The foldable mesh pallet with a size of 1050mm x 1050mm x 1000mm and holding capacity of around 70 cabbages was utilized. The prototype for piling and unloading mechanism was composed of three parts such as feeding device, automatic piling device with retractable bellows, and pallet unloading device. Prior to developing the prototype, the geometric properties and the amount of the damage of the cabbage caused during the piling operation were investigated. Considering the height of the pallet, a series of cabbage carrying plates were mounted to the bracket chain to lift and to carry cabbages to the loading device. Indoor laboratory experiments showed that the cabbage carrying chain conveyor worked successfully. Considering the conveying speed 0.46m/sec of the pull up belt from the cabbages on the ground, the speed of cabbage carrying chain conveyor worked property in the range of 0.26m/sec to 0.36m/sec. The system allowed the operator to modify the position of cabbage slightly. Overall system worked successfully resulting into almost same capacity without severe damage to the cabbage as human did.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.28-34
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• 2023

Nitrogen fertilizers applied to agricultural lands for crop cultivation can be volatilized as ammonia. The released ammonia can catalyze the formation of ultrafine dust (particulate matter, PM2.5), classified as a short-lived climate change pollutant, in the atmosphere. Currently, one of the prominent methods for fertilizer application in agricultural lands is soil surface application, which comprises spraying the fertilizers onto the soil surface, followed by mixing the fertilizers with the soil. Owing to the low nitrogen absorption rate of crops, when nitrogen fertilizers are applied in this manner, they can be lost from land surfaces through volatilization. Therefore, investigating a new fertilization method to reduce ammonia emissions and increase the fertilizer utilization efficiency of crops is necessary. In this study, to develop a method for reducing ammonia emissions from nitrogen fertilizers applied to soil surfaces, deep fertilization was conducted using a newly developed deep fertilization device, and ammonia emissions from barley, garlic, and onion fields were examined. Conventional fertilization (surface application) and deep fertilization (soil depth of 25 cm) were conducted for analysis. The fertilization rate was 100% of the standard fertilization rate used for barley, and deep fertilization of N, P, and K fertilizers was implemented. Ammonia emissions were collected using a wind tunnel chamber, and quantified subsequently susing the indole-phenol blue method. Ammonia emissions released from the basal fertilizer application persisted for approximately 58 d, beginning from approximately 3 d after fertilization in conventional treatments; however, ammonia was not released from deep fertilization. Moreover, barley, garlic, and onion yields were higher in the deep fertilization treatment than in the conventional fertilization treatment. In conclusion, a new fertilization method was identified as an alternative to the current approach of spraying fertilizers on the soil surface. This new method, which involves injecting nitrogen fertilizers at a soil depth of 25 cm, has the potential to reduce ammonia emissions and increase the yields of barley, garlic, and onion.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.83-93
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• 2008

In order to save labor and cost, direct seeding has been considered as an important alternative to the machine transplanting in rice cultivation. Current direct seeding machines for rice in Korea drill irregularly under various operating conditions. This study was conducted to develope a precision seeder which enables the accurate, even-spaced in row placement of rice seeds at uniform depths of 3-4 cm on dry paddy. Design, construction and performance evaluation of the precision seeder were carried out. The tractor rear-mounted type 8-rows precision seeder which performs seeding in addition to fertilizing, ditching, and rotary tilling works on dry paddy was developed. Main components of the seeder were ditcher and leveller, rotary tiller, powered roller type furrow opener, seeding device, powered roller type furrow covering and firming device, hydraulic unit, seeding speed control system, power transmission system, hitch and frame. Ditching, furrow opening, and seed covering and firming performances were good and seeding depths of 2-4 cm could be maintained. Planting accuracies and planting precisions were within 13.6%, and 31.2%, respectively, for planting space of 15 cm, and seeding velocity of 0.5 m/s. These mean variations of average planting space were within 2.1 cm, and 90% of seeds in a hill were seeded within 4.7 cm of hill length, respectively. Error ratios between setting planting space and measured average planting space were shown within 6.7%. Therefore the seeder showed good planting performance up to seeding velocity of 0.5 m/s in field tests. And field capacity of the seeder was about 0.28 ha/hour.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.1-8
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• 2020

In this paper, we proposed a smart greenhouse system that can easily grow plants indoors without professional knowledge by using the criteria of factors affected by common plants (temperature, humidity, soil humidity), and implemented a system that can check the greenhouse state in real time and control the device remotely through mobile applications. Based on Raspberry pie and Arduino, the system measures the state of greenhouse in real time through sensors and automatically controls the device. After growing and experimenting with plants in a greenhouse for a certain period of time, it was confirmed that the environment suitable for each plant was maintained. Therefore, the smart greenhouse system in this paper is expected to improve plant cultivation efficiency and user convenience and also increase beginners' access to plants.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.217-225
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• 2017

A study proposes possibility of new IoT measuring system blended with a smart device. The research serves the best cultivation information for domestic fruit's enhancement of competitive power and also develops a glucose measuring system by which people manage fructose with the mobile device. The mobile glucose tester is designed with a form of accessory which has high portability and utility because the product connects an existing analogy refractometer to the smart phone. You can check the glucose rates data by commodity, region, and season then save measurement results with server in real time for an exclusive application. It's possible to serve the glucose map, graph, and data list through the web service. This is very useful to do collect, analyze, and process the glucose data.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 2000.11c
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• pp.827-834
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• 2000

A granular herbicide applicator attached to conventional ride-on rice transplanter with 6 rows was developed in order to carry out both transplanting and herbicide application at once. It resulted in labor saving by 98%. The prototype is composed of a metering device and a spinning disc spreader. The application rate per 10a can be varied from 1 to 3 kg and the application swath is 1.8 m, which is the planting width of the ride-on rice transplanter with 6 rows. The angular speed of spinning disc and the application height were used as design factors to obtain the uniform distribution of herbicide granules. As the result of experiment, the distribution uniformity showed a tendency to be proportional to the increases of both spinner angular speed and application height. The prototype with angular speed of spinning disc of 7359 rpm and the application height of 20 cm was made and its distribution uniformity was relatively uniform with the CV(coefficient of variation) of 21.7%. In field test, when the tested herbicides such as ACl40+Stomp and Londax+YRC were applied, the weed control has continued for 65 days since transplanting was done.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2012

Purpose: An autonomous robot was developed for harvesting strawberries cultivated in bench-type systems. Methods: The harvest robot consisted of four main components: an autonomous vehicle, a manipulator with four degrees of freedom (DOF), an end effector with two DOFs, and a color computer vision system. Strawberry detection was performed based on 3D image and distance information obtained from a stereo CCD color camera and a laser device, respectively. Results: In this work, a Cartesian type manipulator system was designed, including an intermediate revolute axis and a double driven arm-based joint axis, so that it could generate collision-free motions during harvesting. A DC servomotor-driven end-effector, consisting of a gripper and a cutter, was designed for gripping and cutting the strawberry stem without damaging the strawberry itself. Real-time position tracking algorithms were developed to detect, recognize, trace, and approach strawberries under natural light conditions. Conclusion: The developed robot system could harvest a strawberry within 7 seconds without damage.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1891-1899
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• 2016

Recently food problem and crop disaster have been increased continuously because of the meteorological changes. These cause rising cost for crops continuously and irregularly. Some researchers have studied straight structure of device for hydroponics and plant factory previously to solve a fundamental part of these problems. However, there are several problems such as limited crop cultivation space, providing irregular nutrients for crops, and lack of monitoring interfaces. For them, we propose an optimal growth and development crops management system using light source tracking and recirculation of nutrient solution method to supply nutrient continuously based on IoT. In order to evaluate the performance of our system, we compared and analyzed in terms of two viewpoints, the tracking analysis for natural light source measurement and the growth of crops through artificial light, LED, respectively. We confirmed that the higher the duty ratio of LED, the larger the crop's size, particularly. As well as, for about 1 month, we compared with the existing natural light growing environment and that of our system. It was confirmed that the size of the crops grown through our system is about three times larger than that of natural light natural crops.