Adapting with automation

Loma Vista Nursery in Ottawa, Kan., found a way to pair man and machine to boost efficiency during peak production times.

Ben Cecil, Loma Vista’s production manager, and Jonathan McCombie, head grower, saw an in-person demonstration of Harvest Automation robots that spaced plants. With a 310-acre production nursery, Loma Vista needed a method to make certain production practices more efficient.

The nursery purchased Harvest Automation HV-100 robots, which arrived on site in April 2013, at the height of the busy spring season. The robots require minimal training to operate, while reducing production costs and improving productivity. They are flexible to deploy on open beds, hoop houses and greenhouses with any type of plant on all common ground surfaces including ground cloth, poly and gravel. The robots provide consistent spacing accuracy no matter how long the day is, without breaks, allowing growers to get quality work done whenever they need it.

But the team still had to determine the best way to get plants from the potting line to the fields and in position for the robots to space. One asset that they had at their disposal was a number of drop trailers. Drop trailers can be loaded with plants from the potting line, driven to a field where a skilled operator can deposit the pots with reasonable precision. The bed of the trailer can be tilted down to the ground, and as the tractor that pulls it moves away a moveable bar that is controlled by the driver of the tractor pushes pots out the back of the trailer. A skilled operator can manage this with a one or two helpers on the field, placing pots with precision and without damaging delicate new plants or beds that would require costly and time consuming repair work.

The team loaded the trailers with 144 5-gallon containers and set seven loads down at 20-foot intervals on 150-foot-by-18½-foot wide gravel beds. The robots handled the 5-gallon containers — which often weigh more than 20 pounds — efficiently, according to the Loma Vista team.

The simplicity of setup and ease of use of the HV-100 allowed a single supervisor to easily manage the robots on his own after a brief training session, Cecil said. The robots were configured to space these loads on an 18½-foot bed with a 20-inch-by-20-inch hex spacing.

After only a few practice runs, the Loma Vista team quickly got into a groove. In under three months’ time the HV-100s have spaced more than 100,000 plants. “Only weeks after bringing in the HV-100s, the robots increased productivity prompted us to reconfigure our standard method of plant movement and gain greater efficiency overall,” McCombie said. “As a result, the robots played a crucial role toward achieving our spacing needs at the appropriate time.”

For more: www.lomavistanursery.com; www.harvestai.com.