Improved performance of belt conveyor-feeder

Abstract

The work of the belt conveyor-feeder is accompanied by harsh vibrations during operation in the agricultural environment. The most critical area is the discharge point, where the products leave the belt. The vibrations reduce the accuracy of the automatic product handling process. It was necessary to solve three interconnected problems of the discussed conveyor: accurate automatic determination of the exit product position, reduction of intensive vibrations and proper usage of damped vibration energy. The example of an automatic system for robotic handling and / or manipulating of the exit objects (products) includes a feeding belt conveyor, laser vision sensor arrays, operational arm and vibration energy harvesting dampers. Transported products (transporting objects, which are placed in the feeding transporter) must be picked up (or relocated, or reloaded, etc.) by the controlled arm. The arm's operation action must provide fast performance with perfect accuracy or minimal energy consumption. The obtained information from a laser vision sensor system is inputting to the computerised device, where several procedures are executed. First of all, the speed of the fed objects is determined, and that value of the immediate speed is the governing magnitude to increase / decrease the speed of the drive motor. Secondly, the current position of the product is determined and the necessary commands are formulated to the arm. The third procedure allows form the tuning signals for vibration energy harvesting dampers. The vibration energy harvesting dampers are developed by the authors and installed at the exit of the conveyor. Such installation configuration gives the opportunity to eliminate vibrations at the discharge area and convert the damped vibration energy into useful electrical power. The theoretical modeling was verified by operational experiments. The test results prove the concept proposed in the study and confirm the efficiency of the introduced systems for optimizing of the belt conveyor-feeder operation.