Agricultural Drones
Introduction: Main Idea: The idea of this project is to create smart solution for sustainable production of crops in urban farming using agricultural drones. Agriculture drones can not only enhance the production but can also help in optimization of pesticide
2025-06-28 16:30:09 - Adil Khan
Agricultural Drones
Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject SummaryIntroduction:
Main Idea: The idea of this project is to create smart solution for sustainable production of crops in urban farming using agricultural drones. Agriculture drones can not only enhance the production but can also help in optimization of pesticide spray and fertilization. Using drones to solve agricultural problems can drastically reduce the cost and maintenance of the crop production and also reduce unnecessary chemical exposure to human and wild life.
Introducing UAV applications to urban farming will also help promote urban farming since it includes advantages for the farmer such as:
- Proximity to markets
- Proximity to a large customer base and labor
- Lower weed (and some pest) pressure
- Warmer environmental conditions due to the urban heat sink, which provide earlier production.
Significance: A UAV can take less than half the time it takes for a manned vehicle to cover a crop field for spraying pesticides. Replacing UAVs with humans can reduce human error that will ultimately reduce crop maintenance costs. This agricultural drone will also be used for aerial inspection of the field to provide required imagery to be used for precision farming.
Sensors mounted on this drone will help in predicting the weather conditions and overall environment around the vehicle to ensure the safety of UAV itself and the plantation over which it is flying. Real time info via a GUI and use of metaheuristic systems will result in precise and highly efficient operation.
Problem Statement:
Ground vehicles used for agricultural purposes require paths within the field, limiting the cultivation area and these vehicles cannot be employed in urban farming given the limited lateral space in the cities. Also, conventional systems for spraying pesticides are prone to human errors which eventually result in uneven spraying but a spray mechanism attached to a UAV shall provide accuracy as well as full field coverage in a single flight time.
Excessive and irregular spraying of pesticides is hazardous for plantation and wild life. In addition to that, irregular seeding disturbs the irrigation system and causes uneven distribution of nutrients which ultimately results in unhealthy plantation and poor crop.
In urban farming, crop quality (size and shape) must match the market standards because farmed foods are mostly supplied to residents of the same city and this condition can only be met by ensuring the availability of right amount of nutrients and enough room for each plant to grow.
Also, one of the many challenges urban farming has to face is dependability upon unskilled labor and inexperienced management.
Project Objectives- Using UAVs for agricultural purpose which shall free up the area previously used by ground vehicles or human labor to traverse within the field. This area will now be used for more plantation.
- Real time adaptation to the environment (i.e. wind, humidity or rain) to adjust the drone position for spraying the desired area.
- Reducing human errors shall increase efficiency and thus reduce cost by a significant margin.
- Mapping the field in real time to ensure even spray across the field.
- Seeding using proper mapping will help in equidistant seeding across the field which shall ensure even distribution of nutrition for each plant.
- Reducing human labor to save time, avoid errors & inaccuracy.
The project design is based solely on precision agriculture keeping in mind the agriculture sector of Pakistan. Using agricultural drones for farming such as pesticide spray has been a focus of drone manufacturers for a couple of years and this project is the first step towards the use of drones for precision farming. The literature survey helped us understand the working and problems of a drone and what kind of approach should we take to reach the goal.
Of all the aspects of this project, power is the main focus because a solid power source is required to provide continuous power for a significant amount of time so that the target crop area can be covered in a single flight. For this purpose, a feasibility study of parallel combination of two LiPo batteries was done to ensure safety against accidents caused by miscarriage of LiPo batteries.
An octocopter frame was designed earlier that stands about 1 foot above the ground and arms wide enough to maintain the safe distance between propellers and provide enough room for connecting wires along the arm length.
Since the prototype is not ready yet, the methodology is hypothetical based on the plans to execute successful drone flights. When the prototype will be ready, the vehicle be taken out to the field and tested by spraying the plants during flight. The whole operation will be recorded and errors will be rectified gradually by frequent executions of the same operation. The main hardware component in this project is power distribution board because uninterrupted and hinderance free current is required to flow through the board in order to carry out stable flight and there are risks of burning the PDB as it will be carrying a total of around 200 Amperes of current.
Spray mechanism is yet to be decided, it can either consist of conventional spraying methods aided by a mist pump with its input attached to a tank to feed pesticide liquid and output to a union, leading to four nozzles facing downwards or using the downwind produced by drone propellers to cause enough pressure in the tank to start spraying through the nozzles, the downwind will also help the pesticide to reach the plants instead of drifting away. The later approach will be tested and if successful, can help save energy and provide longer flight because of exclusion of mist pump’s weight.
Further plans for the project is to implement Autopilot features using AI aided by multispectral sensors and global positioning system so that the vehicle can be made fully autonomous and carry out complete operation from flying from its base to refilling it’s tank to landing back to its charging dock.
Benefits of the ProjectAgriculture is the most important sector of Pakistan as it contributes 18.9 percent to country’s GDP but the production is slow and a huge amount of agricultural resources is wasted annually on conventional farming methods. This project holds the potential to be pursued as a tool in agriculture industry for precision farming.
Pakistan does not produce agricultural drones and some local farmers import drones from overseas which is a costly approach to solving agriculture problems. Majority of farmers can’t afford these expensive UAVs and hence stick to conventional spraying methods putting themselves and plants’ life at risk with poor production rate.
This agricultural drone can not only provide for local farming needs rather it has the potential to fill in a huge market gap where locally made agricultural UAVs can either be sold to farmers or can be introduced as a separate business where drones will be provided for agricultural services such as pesticide spray and charge on hourly basis. Government can also buy these drones in bulk and facilitate farmers with subsidized utilization of the UAVs so that farmers can focus on crop improvement rather than worrying about pesticide spray. This is one of the many ways agricultural drones can emerge as an industry in Pakistan and also contribute in the existing industrial agriculture.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableThis is an octocopter (a UAV with 8 propellers) with a tank attached to it having around 2 litres of capacity and vehicle can carry out a 10 minute flight powered by parallely combined LiPo batteries. The UAV is capable of flying over the field, carrying all the pesticide liquid weight and spraying at the same time.
The whole spraying opertaion including takeoff to landing can be controlled by a pilot using a remote controller.
Two LiPo batteries of 5000 mAh, when combined parallely are capable of running 200-Amps of current through drone's Power Distribution Board and hence provide enough energy to BLDCs to lift the vehicle up in the air.
There is a GPS sensor mounted on the UAV to provide real time velocity, timing information and posotion of the drone. But main purpose of GPS here is safety of the UAV and avoidance of losing the drone accidentally.
A microcontroller will be responsoble for initiating and killing the spraying activity on command from remote controller.
Four nozzles are attached with the drone frame positioned such that the downwind produced by propellers will help spread the pesticide equally and drop on the plant instead of drifting out of the field.
Block Diagram
images/Agricultural Drones _1639953461.
| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 80000 | |||
| Power Distribution Board | Equipment | 1 | 10000 | 10000 |
| Brushless DC Motor | Equipment | 8 | 6500 | 52000 |
| Spray System | Equipment | 1 | 8000 | 8000 |
| Required travel for Testing | Miscellaneous | 5 | 2000 | 10000 |