Algorithm Design for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Sprayer using Pulse Width Modulation for Precision Farming

Abstract

Fertilizer and pesticide are the common materials used in agriculture productions. Application of pesticide in open field cultivations using hand sprayer is thought for humans to be precise and causes the toxicity potential for operators. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the precision spraying system are important as a cutting-edge technology to cope with this problem. However, there are still limitations UAV based sprayer with ability to adapt with the doze precisely based on the recommendations. The purpose of this study was to develop the design of algorithms for UAV sprayer using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). The accuracy of the spraying location and dose given is based on the treatment map. Artificial intelligence is used as a tool to translate land condition maps into treatment maps. The Kriging function in the smart map module in QGIS is used to produce a land conditions map into a treatment map with a grid size according to the working width of the sprayer. The result of this research is a smart spraying concept guided by a treatment map in Geo-Tiff format which has latitude, longitude and spray dose information stored in single band data.