Design and Development of an Autonomous Pesticides Spraying Agricultural Drone

In this paper, we demonstrate the development of an aircraft type autonomous agricultural drone for spraying pesticides over crops' field. The drone can fly under different altitude ranging from 5 to 400 meters. The cruise speed of the drone varies between 30–60 kilometer/hour. The drone can carry ~ 2 liters of pesticides as payload. The drone consists of a pesticides spraying device, the function of which is remotely controlled from the ground control station. By varying the speed of the drone and sprayer installed with the drone, we can control the spraying area. The spraying device can release pesticides at a rate of 0.3 liters/sec. When the drone is flown at 36 kilometer/hour at an altitude of 5 meters and angular frequency of the pesticides sprayer of 10 revolutions/sec, it can cover maximum 12.4 square meters of land just within a second. The endurance of the drone is ~ 20 minutes. The proposed drone will not only decrease the number of required manpower and pesticides spraying time but also reduce health hazards of the farmers.