Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
Resin from slash pine (Pinus elliottii Engelm.) represents a renewable and alternative source to petrochemicals for a wide variety of industrial, commercial, and household products. Historically, the collection of slash pine gum resin and the manufacture of products from it represented a significant industry in Georgia and the Southeastern United States. This industry provided countless agricultural and manufacturing jobs in the state and the rest of the southeast. According to the archived records of the American Turpentine Farmers Association, the USA produced 53% of the world's turpentine in 1937 and gum resin production peaked in 1949. The industry began its slow decline not long after due to forest fires, petrochemicals, labor costs, and foreign competition. By 1980, only 300 gum producers existed, and the last US gum resin processing plant closed in 1991.Now, Georgia has over300 million slash pine trees suitable for tapping. Forces such as new tariffs, the volatility of the gum resin import market reduced exports from China as the USA's major supplier, as well as the push toward renewable, recyclable materials, and biofuels indicate the gum resin and turpentine industry is ready for a resurgence in Georgia. The US industry thrived when subsistence farming, sharecropping, turpentine camps, convict labor, and slavery were common practices keeping labor costs low. Automation of resin tapping and collection is the only way to solve labor issues to revive the naval stores industry in the USA and give it a competitive edge. Agricultural robots represent a future $35 Bn industry.B & L Naval Stores together with Georgia Southern University intend to develop a roboticsystem (Forest Rover) capable of borehole drilling, treatingwith resin flow stimulating chemicals, and placing a spout and collection vessel.The forest rover will adapt existing industrial robot technology to include a vision system, a laser surface scanner,and a GPS navigation system.The rover will need a custom-designed tool changer with load and torque sensors for the robot arm. All these features will allow the rover to identify pine trees, approach them, drill the borehole(s), deliver resin stimulating chemicals, and insert the collection system.The rover will also be able to collect, store, and send to a ground station, data on tree diameter, location, images, borehole location/orientation for creating and maintaining a pine plantation database. All equipment will be mounted on a customed-designed chassis and powered by methanol to generated hydrogen gas for a 3kW fuel cell for electrical power and long-range travel, which is already in development at GSU.Automated pine oleoresin tapping represents a way to revive the industry in the Southeast and adds a third long-term renewable revenue stream for the landowner beyond pine straw and timber production.Resin collection is nondestructive and supports biofuels, including other value-added forest products.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
100%
Goals / Objectives
The visionary goal of this work is to automate pine resin tapping and collection to revive the naval stores industry in the southeastern United States through a fully autonomous, long -range, robotic forest rover powered with renewable fuel cell technology. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will demonstrate the technical feasibility of such an automated system to replace the formerly labor-intensive process of tapping and collecting oleoresins from slash pine trees in a cost-effective way. Generally, the objectives of this work involve the integration of existing technology (robotic arm, tool changer, tool gripper, machine vision system, a laser scanner, GPS locator, data storage) to perform all the tasks associated with the tapping and collection process. B & L Naval Stores with its subcontractor Georgia Southern University will demonstrate the feasibility of the following objective tasks: 1) identify the tree diameter and borehole(s) placement through laser scanner and machine vision; 2) teach the robotic arm the sequence of operations to be performed -drilling the holes, spraying-resin flow stimulating chemicals, inserting a collection vessel; 3) create a database and storing the tree location and any other data; 4) power these components with a renewable fuel cell; and 5) tying all these tasks together will involve integrated computer programming before developing the 6) custom built chassis capable of self-movement through the tree farm.
Project Methods
To achieve the automation of pine resin tapping and collection we will design and integrate robotic technology consisting of unmanned, fully autonomous, long-range robotic forest rover. The proposed integrated system will address two priorities:A. To be unmanned and fully automated: The forest rover will use general-purpose automation technology (industrial robot) equipped with a machine vision system, laser scanner (LiDAR), automated tool changer, load, and torque sensor attached to the robot end-of-arm and global positioning navigation system. This characteristic will allow the system to identify healthy, mature pine trees, approach them, drill three converging boreholes into the tree trunk, treat the holes with resin flow stimulating chemicals, cap two holes and spout the third hole with a PVC pipe and resin collection vessel. In addition to these tasks, the system will record the GPS coordinates of the tree, its diameter, the position, and orientation of the three drilled boreholes, will store digital images of the tree, and communicate the information to a ground station for creating and updating a farm database.B. To be long-endurance (long-range): A high fuel-to electricity energy conversion system for motive power will contribute to the increased range of the rover, will power the robot and other electrical equipment. The energy conversion system will consist of a 3kWe High-Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (HT-PEMFC) stack, a methanol reformer and electrochemical hydrogen pump.The forest rover will possess a Fanuc LR MATE 200 iD robot and an R-30iB robot controller. The selection of general-purpose automation equipment (industrial robot) as opposed to special purpose automation (equipment designed for a specific task, has the following advantages in this application:Flexibility to perform all required manufacturing operations, such asdrilling, spraying chemicals, capping holes, and inserting the collection system. The robot will have an automatic robot tool changer (ATI Industrial Automation - QC11) that will enable it to pick up the required tools for operation: electric rotary drill for borehole drilling, 3-fingers robot gripper for handling all the required tools and materials.Capability to calculate the position and orientation of the three boreholes as a function of tree trunk diameter and of aligning the all the tools for the tasks within theindustrial robot's ability to move the tools attached to their end-of-arm in the work envelope using a "world coordinate system" that remains unchanged during operation. A particularly challenging task in this automated manufacturing process is identifying the positions of the three borehole spouts where the spray nozzle, the plugs, and the PVC pipe need to be inserted after drilling. The robot will be equipped with a force/torque sensor (ATI Industrial Automation - 9105-TW MINI40) mounted between the robot end-of-arm and the drilling tool to address this challenge. The moment the drilling tool touches the tree trunk, the transducer will sense a change in force and torque. The robot controller will record the coordinates and orientation of that position in the robot's world coordinate system. After drilling the holes, those will be the points where the robot will insert the nozzle for spraying resin flow stimulating chemicals, two plugs, and the PVC pipe in the subsequent operations.Capability to perform image analysis to identify pine trees with a trunk diameter of at least 8 inches at an elevation of 4.5 feet above the ground, to perform image analysis to recognize slash pine tree bark and the capability to approach the tree and position itself within working distance. The robot will possess a digital camera (National Instruments), surface laser scanner (Hokuyo UTM-30LX-EW) and machine vision system for image analysis based on LabView and/or MATLAB Robotics Modules. Two inspection vision processes will occur: the first one will use the vision system and LiDAR to measure the tree trunk diameter and the distance between the tree and the rover. The second inspection process will recognize the slash pine tree bark based on previously taught images. Upon successful recognition of the tree, the rover will approach the tree within working distance using information from the LiDAR and rover controller (National Instruments roboRIO).Capability of storing data on the position and orientation of the three boreholes, corroborate them with their geographical orientation determined using a digital compass sensor (for example Lego - Mindstorms NXT), and digital images of the tree and communicate them to a database that will store information regarding the global positioning coordinates of the tree measured using a GPS sensor (for example UBLOX NEO-M8N).The long-range (long-endurance) capability of the forest rover will be secured using a high fuel-to-electricity conversion system consisting of a 3kW electricity high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC), a methanol reformer, and an electrochemical hydrogen pump. Fuel cells are energy conversion devices that convert the chemical energy of a fuel (hydrogen gas) directly to electricity at higher conversion efficiencies than other systems. PEMFCs deliver high-power density and offer the advantages of low weight and volume, rapid start-up, and better durability compared with other fuel cells, features that make them particularly suitable for automotive applications. HT-PEMFCs are capable of operating between 120oC and 180oC without external humidification, which gives them significant benefits over the low-temperature PEMFCs. These benefits include simplified water and thermal management, faster electrode kinetics for both electrode reactions, and an improved anode tolerance to carbon monoxide concentrations up to 3% (compared to less than 100 ppm in low-temperature PEMFCs). These benefits make HT-PEMFCs particularly suitable for reformate gas-operating automotive systems with a simplified design, in which the preferential oxidation stage in the fuel processing line can be eliminated. Also, they result in automotive systems with a significant reduction in cost and complexity resulting from a smaller radiator in the cooling loop and the elimination of the humidifiers in the gas feed loops. The 3kWe HT-PEMFC stack and the electrochemical pump are under construction at Georgia Southern University with internal funding; however, their construction is not part of the proposed project. They will be integrated along with the methanol reformer into the proposed forest rover power system. Methanol is an energy carrier with energy density seven times higher than that of compressed hydrogen gas available using today's technology. Methanol poses no storage problems and can be easily converted onboard to hydrogen-rich gas at temperatures similar to the operating temperatures of HT-PEMFCs using inexpensive catalysts. Moreover, methanol represents a fuel produced from renewable energy sources.The success of the project will be measured by demonstrating the feasibility of the manufacturing operations performed by the robot and of the measurements using image analysis described above. The feasibility of the manufacturing operations including drilling three convergent holes in a 8-inch diameter pine tree log, automatically changing the tools, identifying the hole spouts, spraying the holes with liquid, inserting a tube and two caps in the holes will be carried out in the Georgia Southern University (GSU) Advanced Robotics Laboratory using a Fanuc LR Mate 200iD robot mount on a cart. The feasibility of the rover to positively identify pine trees using image analysis, to measure the tree diameter using the LiDAR and to navigating autonomously towards the tree avoiding obstacles will be carried out on the GSU campus.