Tractor drawn multicrop planters are more and more widely used for planting maize in India. Seed meters of these planters are usually driven by drive wheel and chain and sprocket system (mechanical seed metering system) at present. Because of the slippage of drive wheels and vibration of chains, planting accuracy cannot be ensured, especially at higher forward speed. To improve the planting performance of these planters, a mechatronic seed metering system was developed and its field working performance was evaluated in this research. A tractor drawn multicrop planter was modified to allow simultaneously using two different seed metering systems, i.e., with three rows unit equipped with the newly designed mechatronic seed metering system and the other three rows unit equipped with conventional mechanical seed metering system, and used for planting at three forward speeds (2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 km/h). The distances between adjacent seeds in each plot were measured and the indices of uniformity in seed spacing, quality of feed index (QFI), miss index and coefficient of variation were analyzed. With the average 4.70% increase of QFI and 3.54% decrease of miss index, the mechatronic seed metering system performed better than the mechanical seed metering system at each forward speed. The values of slippage of gauge wheel of the mechatronic seed metering system are comparable to values of slippage of drive wheel of the mechanical seed metering system are significantly worse than those. The result indicates that the mechatronic seed metering system can eliminate the effect of drive wheel slippage on planting quality and maintain the uniformity of seed distribution. Although the QFI, miss index and coefficient of variation become worse with the increase of forward speed, with the worst values of QFI of 89.93%, miss index of 5.08% and coefficient of variation of 18.80% at the highest forward speed of 4.5 km/h, the mechatronic seed metering system can reduce the effect of forward speed on planting accuracy effectively. As compared to the mechanical seed metering system, the advantage of the mechatronic seed metering system is more noticeable especially when the forward speed is more than 3.5 km/h.