Meet the maize-Shelling Robot: Making Shelling Maize Easy and Exciting
- Beschreibung
Efficient post-harvest processing is crucial for sustainable agricultural production. Recently, a photovoltaic powered maize sheller was developed and tested at our institute. Yet, manual feed of maize cobs into the sheller is a time-consuming process and a bottleneck for optimizing the throughput of the sheller to the farmers’ needs. Automation presents an opportunity to enhance productivity, reduce labor demands, and improve ergonomics.
While industrial robotic arms are widely used in manufacturing, their application in small-scale agricultural contexts remains underexplored. This project aims to address these challenges by developing and experimentally testing a robotic system capable of reliably feeding maize cobs to a maize sheller.
- Beschreibung des interdisziplinären Teils des Projekts
- This project will encompass different scientific disciplines: • Engineering (robotics, sensor technology, automation) • Agricultural sciences (crop handling, post-harvest technology) • Statistics and data analysis
- Projektzeitraum
- Wintersemester 2025/2026
- Bewerbungszeitraum
- 13. bis 27.10.2025
- Durchführung
- semesterbegleitend
- Details zu Projektzeitraum und Durchführung
The study will be conducted in the experimental hall of the Institute of Agricultural Engineering. The collected experimental data will be analyzed and used in the final presentation.
Objectives
- To enhance a prototype robotic arm that can grasp and feed maize cobs to a maize sheller in a controlled manner.
- To test the performance of the robotic arm in terms of accuracy, reliability and throughput.
- To evaluate the feasibility and benefits of such automation in small-scale processing units.
- Studienfach
-
Agrarwissenschaften
Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics & Subtropics
Crop Sciences
Environmental Protection and Agricultural Food Production
Food Science and Engineering
Food Science and Technology
Lebensmittelwissenschaft und Biotechnologie
Nachwachsende Rohstoffe und Bioenergie
Organic Agriculture and Food Systems - Betreuende
- Janvier Ntwali, Khandoker Ahammad, Wiomou Bonzi, Iris Ramaj, Prof. Dr. Joachim Müller
- Institut
- Institut für Agrartechnik (440) (440e)
- Sprache
- deutsch/englisch
- Teilnehmendenanzahl
- min. 1, max. 1
- Arbeitsaufwand
-
ca. 150 Stunden pro Teilnehmende:r
| 5
ECTS-Punkte
Arbeitsaufwand (Stunden und ggf. ECTS) sind ungefähre Angaben. Die tatsächlich vergebenen ECTS-Punkte ergeben sich aus der tatsächlich geleisteten Arbeit.
- Für dieses Projekt ist kein Motivationsschreiben des Studierenden erforderlich
- Projektart
- experimentell
- Lernziele
-
Die Teilnehmende lernen in diesem Projekt:
- Formulating and processing a scientific question
- Basics of robotic programming and control
- Perform experimental testing and data analysis
- Report and present scientific work
- Anmerkungen für Studierende
- Schlagworte
- maize, robotics, control, shelling