Mechanism for transplanting of seedlings has already been developed. But, the picking up of rice seedlings from the nursery bed is also a very laborious job. So, is there any mechanism developed for picking up the rice seedlings from nursery bed?
There's one approach so called ‘modified mat nursery’ which could result to less labour, less land and interestingly they’ve also claimed reduced root damage in this approach. You can see a movie-clip here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLS2WvMoDLc
Moreover, you can also go through this operational manual: http://csisa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Operational-Manual-for-Mechanical-Transplanting-of-Rice.pdf