A Smart Agricultural Revolution in a Rice Field

The implementation of agronomy and agricultural machinery automation technology in agricultural production

At present, in the main operational processes of rice cultivation, planting, and harvesting, the mechanization of cultivation and harvesting has been basically achieved. However, the degree of automation in the planting process is relatively low. Zhu Defeng, Director of the Rice Production Technology Center of the China Rice Research Institute, explained that this is due to the complexity of China's rice planting environment and the diversity of variety types, which requires innovative models and breakthroughs in technology.

Professor Zhu, as a senior industry expert, There is a profound insight into the exploration and practice of rice cultivation technology in China: "With the development of China's social economy, the production mode, equipment, and technology of rice are undergoing significant changes. The scale of rice production, mechanized operation, and social service level are constantly improving. A significant increase in rice yield has been achieved. From the early days of liberation, the average yield of rice per mu was 126 kilograms, to recent years, it has increased to 475 kilograms, an increase of about 2.8 times."

Chinese farmers have an experience that has been passed down through generations: "Half the rice is planted well.". This sentence fully expresses the importance of rice seedling cultivation in the entire rice production process. The mechanical cultivation and transplanting of rice seedlings is the main direction for the development of mechanized rice planting in China. The key to mechanical transplanting is seedling cultivation, which requires innovative models and technologies for large-scale rice cultivation and supply, promoting large-scale rice production and social services.

As a technical partner of the China Rice Research Institute, Fengzhu Agriculture has undertaken the task of industrializing Professor Zhu's research results. Its main focus is on the construction planning and design of rice seedling centers, research and development of core equipment and integration of application technologies, digital intelligence and automation control technologies, as well as research on the operation mode of rice seedling centers.

"The main risk in rice production lies in seedling cultivation, and the period from rice soaking, sowing to rice emergence, which takes about 5 days, is the most critical stage of rice seedling cultivation. It requires high temperature and humidity environment and precise time." said Wu Jianping, General Manager of Hangzhou Fengzhu Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd "After 10 years of research and practice, Fengzhu Agriculture has gradually formed a development technology route suitable for China's national conditions for rice seedling centers. The intelligent seedling center has completely changed traditional agricultural production methods, using automation technology throughout the entire process from covering soil, sowing, watering, re covering soil to tray transportation, achieving precise emergence within 48 hours with a seedling emergence rate of up to 95%."

Accurate and efficient intelligent seedling cultivation production line

"Fengzhu Agriculture has a profound understanding of rice seedling cultivation technology, but we lack advanced mechanical equipment and automated digital control technology. We hope to introduce more advanced, precise, and fully intelligent equipment and technology in the entire process of rice seedling cultivation in China, in order to truly meet the future needs of large-scale, efficient, and low-cost agriculture in China." Mr. Wu admitted, Festo has unique advantages in advanced digital control technology, especially in distributed bus control. Since 2021, Fengzhu Agriculture has established a cooperative relationship with Festo. Fengzhu Agriculture excels in the industrialization process and technical key points of rice seedling cultivation, while Festo provides key automation and intelligent control, which complement each other and are the combination and complementarity of agriculture and industry. It has also become a successful example of China's agricultural industrialization.

According to Li Xingdong, the application manager of the food and packaging industry in Festo's Greater China business area, visualization, modularity, and digitization are the characteristics and advantages of this seedling cultivation production line. This production line can achieve full automation production from empty seedling trays to stacked sown seedling trays, without the need for manual intervention during production. The operation status of the entire production line can be monitored in real-time. Each seedling cultivation center is equipped with 1-2 intelligent seedling production lines, which can meet the seedling cultivation task of 20000 acres of rice.

• The CPX-E-CEC provided by Festo serves as the controller for the entire production line, used to control and collect execution mechanisms and detection signals such as motors, cylinders, cylinders, and sensors in the production line, in order to achieve the control requirements for stable operation of the production line. And all controllers and underlying components are integrated with digital interfaces, which can achieve digital interconnection and control of the underlying layer. The interconnection with higher-level controllers, upper computers, and even the cloud is more convenient, making it easy to achieve full digitalization of the system, laying the foundation for the intelligent transformation of equipment in the future.
• In response to the characteristics of long seedling production lines and scattered equipment, Festo CPX-AP-I distributed control is adopted, which can be flexibly combined into centralized, decentralized, hybrid network topologies, etc. CPX-AP-I provides different modules to be compatible with various types of pneumatic or electrical actuators on site. At the same time, CPX-AP-I provides different network communication interfaces to connect upper computer platforms, such as PROFINET, EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, etc., seamlessly connecting the high-speed data exchange channel from the on-site grassroots to the cloud service platform.
• In the palletizing process, the Festo truss manipulator adopts a combination of EGC electric axes and ELCC electric axes installation, and is equipped with a long stroke gripper DHPL, which meets the needs of high-speed grasping and placement of rice trays at the end of the production line. At the same time, in the process of dividing and stacking trays, the action rhythm was optimized, ultimately achieving a production speed of 1200 trays per hour on the production line.

Digitization and intelligence are the development directions of automation equipment, and the same applies to rice seedling production lines. Regarding the next stage of cooperation direction, Manager Li Xingdong revealed that Festo will introduce the Festo AX platform in subsequent projects, integrate and analyze the digital interconnection data in the early stage, not only achieve the display of various production information and equipment status on the dashboard, but also provide result suggestions for the collected data, achieving a true transformation from automation, digitization to intelligence.