Carrot harvesting made easy

Students from the University of Stuttgart design innovative planting and harvesting machines in the 27th design competition. Which machine best plants and harvests carrots? In the task assignment for the 27th design competition, the Institute of Design and Production in Precision Engineering (IKFF) included aspects of a current topic from spring 2020. The students had to develop machines that are able to put down and pick up objects. Simply put, the machines should be usable as planting and harvesting aids. The IKFF could not imagine a year without a design competition. For this reason, Eberhard Burkard and his colleagues at the institute offered the competition again this year, albeit in a virtual form, to students who are in the 4th semester of the Mechanical Engineering and Automotive and Engine Engineering study programs. The task, Burkard thought, was actually quite simple: "Before you can harvest carrots, you must first plant seeds." Specifications that had to be observed included weight, the initial size, and energy supply.