Neural network prediction of performance parameters of an inclined plate seed metering device and its reverse mapping for the determination of optimum design and operational parameters

Seed planting equipment with inclined plate seed metering devices is the most commonly used equipment for planting of peanut crop in India. For obtaining the high yield, it is very essential to drop the peanut seeds in rows maintaining accurate seed rate and seed spacing with minimum damage to seeds during metering. This mainly depends on forward speed of the planting equipment, rotary speed of the metering plate and area of cells on the plate. The relationship between these factors and the performance parameters viz., seed rate, seed spacing and percent seed damage can be established using regression analysis. But they may not be very accurate and may pose difficulty in the determination of inputs for a set of desired outputs (reverse mapping). Hence, an attempt has been made in this paper to develop the feed forward artificial neural network (ANN) models for the prediction of the performance parameters of an inclined plate seed metering device. The data were generated in the laboratory by conducting experiments on a sticky belt test stand provided with a seed metering device and an opto-electronic seed counter. The generated data was used to develop both statistical and neural network models. The performance of the developed models was compared among themselves for 4 randomly generated test cases. The results show that the ANN model predicted the performance parameters of the seed metering device better than the statistical models. In order to determine the optimum forward speed of the planting equipment, peripheral speed of the metering plate and the area of cells on the plate to obtain the recommended seed rate of 33.33 seeds/m(2), seed spacing of 100 mm and percent seed damage of 0.2% with 100% fill of the cells, a novel technique of reverse mapping using ANN model was followed. It was observed that the optimum forward speed of the planting equipment and optimum area of cells on the metering plate had good correlation with size of seed. Linear regression equations were developed to predict the optimum forward speed of the planting equipment and optimum area of cells on the metering plate using the size of seeds as independent parameter. The peripheral speed of the metering plate of 0.237 m/s was found to be optimum for the size of seeds in the range of 95.42-123.01 mm(2). However, the results need to be verified by conducting planting operation under actual field conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.