Analysis of the Influence of Parameters of a Spraying System Designed for UAV Application on the Spraying Quality Based on Box–Behnken Response Surface Method

Abstract

With the development of precision agriculture (PA), low-altitude and low-volume spraying based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is playing an increasingly important role in the control of crop diseases, pests, and weeds. However, the aerial spraying quality and droplet drift are affected by many factors, some of which are controllable (e.g., flight and spraying parameters) and some of which are not (e.g., environmental parameters). In order to study the influence of spraying parameters on the UAV-based spraying performance, we propose a UAV-compatible spraying system and a customized experimental platform in this work. Through single-factor test and Box–Behnken response surface methods, four influencing factors, namely spraying height, flow rate, distance between nozzles, and pulse width modulation (PWM) duty cycle, were studied under indoor conditions. Variance analysis and multiple quadratic regression fitting were performed on the test data by using Design-Expert 8.0.5B software, and quadratic polynomial regression models of effective spraying width, droplet coverage density, coefficient of variation, and droplet coverage rate were established. Based on the Z-score standardization, a mathematical model of the comprehensive score with four factors was established to evaluate the spraying quality and predict optimal spraying parameters. Test results indicate that the effect intensity of four influencing factors from strong to weak is PWM duty cycle, flow rate, distance between nozzles, and spraying height, and their optimal values are 98.65%, 1.74 L/min, 1.0 m, and 1.60 m, respectively. Additionally, verification experimental results demonstrate that the deviation between the predicted comprehensive score and the actual value was less than 6%. This paper can provide a reference for the design and optimization of UAV spraying systems.

The q-rung fuzzy LOPCOW-VIKOR model to assess the role of unmanned aerial vehicles for precision agriculture realization in the Agri-Food 4.0 era

“…However, previous research studies on the selection of UAVs used in defense (Hamurcu and Eren 2020 ; Radovanović et al 2021 ) and civil sector (Akpınar 2021 ; Ulukavak and Miman 2019 ) display that criteria such as payload capacity, maximum speed, maximum endurance, economic life, maximum altitude, and price are determinants in their selection. Based on the literature review on agricultural UAVs, evaluation criteria are especially determined based on their spraying and spreading systems (Hu et al 2022 ; Wang et al 2019 ), radar systems (Wang et al 2022a ; Yasin et al 2020 ), camera (Kim et al 2019 ; Petkovics et al 2017 ), remote control (Sinha and Dhanalakshmi 2022 ), power system (Khelifi and Butun ( 2022 ), technology (Li et al 2018 ), battery (Petkovics et al 2017 ), efficiency (Li et al 2022 ; Wang et al 2022c ), and price (Abbasi et al 2022b ).…”

Structural optimization design of BIW using NSGA-III and entropy weighted TOPSIS methods

“…There are a lot of grids in a BIW finite element model so that the calculation cost may be high while the optimization efficiency may be low. Optimization methods based on surrogate models, such as the response surface method, 8,9 radial basis function (RBF), 10,11 kriging method, 12,13 support vector machine, 14,15 and artificial neural network method, 16,17 are relatively more efficient. On the other hand, it remains challenging to determine the most suitable surrogate modeling method for approximation and optimization of the responses.…”

Aplicação de pesticidas com veículos aéreos não tripulados nas culturas de café, citros e feijão

“…Melhorar a eficiência da aplicação e reduzir o uso de pesticidas, promovendo o desenvolvimento sustentável da agricultura é um desafio mundial neste século (WANG et al, 2022a). Para aumentar a produção de alimentos e alimentar uma população de cerca de nove bilhões em 2050, é imprescindível a modernização da agricultura por meio da aplicação de soluções tecnológicas (UKAEGBU et al, 2021).…”

“…Embora as máquinas agrícolas terrestres desempenhem um papel fundamental na pulverização das lavouras, áreas agrícolas íngremes e montanhosas ou culturas de alto porte, restringem sua utilização no controle de doenças, pragas e plantas daninhas (GUO et al, 2020;LAN;CHEN, 2018;WANG et al, 2022a). As aeronaves tripuladas mesmo que equipadas com tecnologia avançada de pulverização, ainda apresentam limitações de uso, como o elevado risco de deriva (LIU et al, 2021a).…”

“…Esses estudos vêm sendo desenvolvidos tanto em cultivos de baixo porte (WANG et al, 2022b;YAN et al, 2021;ZHAO et al, 2022) como em culturas arbóreas . No entanto, muitos desses parâmetros ainda não estão bem definidos e não existe uma referência técnica exata que os operadores possam consultar WANG et al, 2022a). Além disso, especialmente no Brasil, ainda são raras as pesquisas com a pulverização de VANTs.…”