The Study And Design Of The Potato Seed Auto-Cutting Machine

Using the pieces of the potato for cropping is not only good for seedling emergency of potato but also can save the quantity of potato, reduce the cost for buying the potato seed. The efficiency of the traditional manual cutting pattern is low, which cannot meet the modern potato-cutting requirement. This paper depending on the design idea of intelligent system, designs a potato seed auto-cutting machine by studying the technical focal points in the potato-cutting procedure, and studies the recognition algorithm of the potato eye based on the image processing techniques and BP network for using in the function of potato eye recognition in the improved potato-cutting machine.The automatic control system of the potato-cutting machine includes the main controller, the stepping motor drive unit, the DC motor drive unit, the sensor detection unit, the spraying unit, the keyboard and display unit. The chip EP1C3T100C8N produced by the Altera Corporation, that is a FPGA chip, is used as the main control chip. The Verilog HDL is used for programming the driving program of units and the function and timing simulation of the driving programs are done. The mission of the controller is to control the start, stop and the speed of the motors and the spraying time. The mission of the sensor detection unit is to detect whether there is a potato for cutting in the cylinder or not. The mission of the spraying unit is to sterilize for the knife, which can protect the potato from infecting the bacteria. The mission of the keyboard unit is to control the controller and the mission of the display unit is to display the quantity of the cut potato.The potato image must be processed by using the threshold segmentation and the mark process before the potato eye is recognized from the potato image, and then 9 features are extracted from the eye area. The 9 features are used for recognizing whether the eye area extracted from other potato image is a potato eye. The experiments show that it is feasible for the image processing technique combined with BP network for recognizing the potato eye.The mechanical system includes the mechanism for separating the potato, the feeding mechanism, the potato cutting mechanism and the mechanism for collection. The CAD technique is used for designing the mechanical system. The method of crank and connecting rod mechanism is used in the design of the potato cutting mechanism and the force on the crank and connecting rod mechanism is studied. The design of the machine is incredible. The application of the machine can advance the potato-cutting efficiency greatly in the potato plant area.