Chilli (Capsicum annuum), one of the essential
ingredients in Sri Lankan cuisine, is widely cultivated for
producing dried chilli. The narrow conical-shaped chilli pods with
wrinkled surface do not support much of the existing common
mechanical feeding systems such as augers or bucket conveyorsin
the chilli processing plants. Therefore, the objective of this study is
to design and develop a robotic arm with a proper grabbing
technique to feed chilli into the grinding mill. Furthermore, it is
intended to install the developed robotic arm in an industrial level
processing plant to test the feasibility of theindustrial
application.The industrial robot designed in this study is primarily
composed of three parts: the base, the arm and the wrist. These
components connect with joints to form a unit. At the end of the
wrist, an end-effector, which is a gripper for grasping chilli pods,
is located.ATmega328 microcontroller, micro switches and DC
motors were used to operate the robotic arm. The feeding rate is
automatically controlled using a Hall Effect sensor. The robotic
arm grabber was placed on top of the chilli containing trough
(2.5m wide, 10.5m long, and 1.25m high) of an industrial level
chilli processing plant.When operating, the grabber could grab
1.640±0.128 kg of chilli from the bulk in a single operation. The
average time taken for one complete cycle of grabbing chilli,
lifting the grabber, turning the arm on to the conveyer and
releasing chilli on to the belt conveyor, varies from 20 s and 30 s
depending on the height of chilli in the trough. The feeding rate
varies from 440.6 kg/h and 218.66 kg/h when chilli is grabbed
from the top and the bottom layers respectively. Therefore, this
system can be recommended for maximum feeding rate of chilli up
to 218.66 kg/h. Capacity can be increased by adding the same
mechanism parallel or scaling up the existing system.