Design and Implementation of Automatic Paddy Drying Robotic System with Raspberry Pi Integration

The process of drying rice paddies holds immense significance in rice production, profoundly influencing thequality of the final yield by ensuring the ideal moisture content. Among the conventional techniques for managing the solar drying process, manual tedding stands out – a labor-intensive procedure that entails the physical task of flipping and evenly dispersing the grains. This method remains widely practiced by Filipino farmers due to its cost- efficiency and minimal environmental impact. Nevertheless, there is an increasing demand for modernizing this process to enhance efficiency and elevate the quality of rice output. The focal point of this research is to engineer an automated tedding mechanism for sun- drying rice grains. Several forward-thinking designs were explored, encompassing a tossing mechanism, a plow-based configuration, a vacuum-assisted system, and a cutting-edge sweeper wheel concept. Following meticulous evaluation, a specific mechanism was chosen for production and subjected to rigorous testing. The findings unequivocally demonstrate the effectiveness of the chosen model in efficiently collecting and redistributing grains on the drying surface, achieving an impressively low margin of error, falling below 5%. This breakthrough holds the promise of streamlining the rice drying process, yielding time and resource savings, and ultimately elevating the overall quality of the rice harvest.