Row After Row

In between every strike and gutter ball at the bowling alley, the row of ten perfect pins regenerates itself, almost magically. When pins are nudged out of place by falling pins or the ball itself, the equipment senses the pins’ location, cycling them through the machine and replacing them in another evenly-spaced row. And, even when the unlucky bowler misses a lone pin on either side of the alley, the machinery knows to pick up the final pin, reuniting it with nine others so the next bowler can take his best shot.

Watching the JUNIOR field container handling system immediately brings to mind this scenario, as the apparatus loads, grabs and sets down row after row of evenly-spaced nursery containers. During a field demonstration June 6 at Willoway Nurseries, Avon, Ohio, this revolutionary equipment signified the ever-growing push to enhance technology in the landscape and nursery industries while simultaneously reducing challenges arising from labor demands.

More than five years in the making, the JUNIOR prototype stems directly from growers’ search for an easier, more efficient way to space, move and unload thousands of nursery containers. The idea originated with the Horticultural Research Institute (HRI), the research division of the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA), after creating a task force in 1997 to analyze labor and mechanization in the nursery industry, said Dwight Hughes, owner, Dwight Hughes Nursery, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a member of HRI.

“As a member of the board of trustees of HRI, several of us realized we had to look at nursery research in a different way for the next millennium,” he said. “We realized our biggest issue was labor, in terms of quality, availability and training techniques.” Thus, when HRI members identified container spacing and unloading as their most daunting obstacle, the task force began its research into a system that would mechanize the container handling process and eliminate some of these labor stresses.

Thanks to an HRI partnership with Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, $1 million dollars in combined funding from HRI, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and NASA, and guidance from Carnegie Mellon’s Dr. Hagen Schempf, the JUNIOR idea is now a reality. Basically, JUNIOR utilizes a grabber head to pick up, set down and space a variety of nursery container types in 7-foot-wide rows. These rows can then be spaced in different configurations, depending on the growers’ needs. In a typical eight-hour work day, JUNIOR can handle between 25,000 and 40,000 containers, requiring only two operators – one to load and unload the nursery material, and one to bring or take the containers to or from the field.

After JUNIOR picks up containers, they are placed onto a conveyor belt and then moved onto a trailer by an operator. Similarly, when placing containers, operators only need to load the containers onto the belt and the apparatus spaces the material according to a pre-selected setting. The secret to JUNIOR’s success lies in a front-mounted infrared laser scanner that accurately senses container location, as well as any out-of-position objects or obstacles. In addition, due to the laser’s 180-degree field of view, it doubles as a safety mechanism, ensuring that operators are out of the way during the machine’s operation.

The demonstration at Willoway Nurseries is JUNIOR’s third in a line of field tests at U.S. nurseries this spring. Once the field tests end, the JUNIOR apparatus will hopefully appeal to a manufacturer so the organizations involved can take the next step toward realizing this technology’s impact in the field. “Our dream for the future will be not only to pick up the containers, but bar code them, fertilize, palletize, etc.” Hughes remarked. “That will then trickle down to retail garden centers, the landscape industry and the retail wholesale industry – but we had to start somewhere, and it was hardest to pick up the containers.”

Additionally, when initial research into the JUNIOR apparatus began, the task force analyzed the tree spade and how its technology had expanded from its initial introduction in the 1960s to its attachment capability across several types of equipment today. Hughes envisions a similar evolution with JUNIOR. “Our dream is to totally mechanize container handling technology,” he said. “In the future we’re going to cannibalize it: just as the tree spade first came out on the trailer model and then expanded, we see the same progression with this technology.”

Overall, a large key to JUNIOR’s development lies in the willingness of several organizations in and out of the industry to come together and realize HRI’s goals, as well as the demands of growers across the country, Hughes continued. “We pooled our resources and our talent and made this a major industry thrust,” he said. “It involves strategic planning for our industry, and it’s going to revolutionize container-handling.” – Kristin Mohn

The author is Assistant Editor – Internet of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at kmohn@lawnandlandscape.com.