Low-Injury Rubber Tapping Robots: A Novel PSO-PID Approach for Adaptive Depth Control in Hevea Brasiliensis

Ruiwu Xu, Yulan Liao, Junxiao Liu, Zhifu Zhang and Xirui Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Ruiwu Xu: School of Information and Communication Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Yulan Liao: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Junxiao Liu: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Zhifu Zhang: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
Xirui Zhang: School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China

Agriculture, 2025, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: Rubber tapping robots represent a significant research direction in modern robotics in agricultural automation. Nevertheless, natural rubber tapping robots encounter considerable challenges in achieving precise tapping, particularly in controlling tapping depth, due to the lack of suitable control algorithms. To solve this problem, an improved Particle Swarm Optimization/Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PSO-PID) control method has been proposed in this paper. It enhances the inertia weight of the particle swarm by introducing adaptive inertia weight, solving the shortcomings of the traditional PSO algorithm, such as insufficient local search ability and early convergence. The experimental results show that the rubber tapping depth system based on the improved PSO-PID algorithm has high responsiveness and robustness, with an average settling time of 0.419 s and an overshoot that can be kept below 2.5%. The depth control accuracy, robustness and convergence speed of the system are significantly better than other well-known optimization algorithms. At a tapping depth of 3.0 mm, the injury rate was reduced to 2%, surpassing the level of skilled manual tapping workers. It has been proven that this method can effectively solve the key problem of accurate depth control in current rubber tapping.

Keywords: rubber tapping robot; improved PSO-PID; tapping depth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/10/1089/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/10/1089/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:15:y:2025:i:10:p:1089-:d:1658586

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().