Design and Manufacture of an Aerial Pollinator Robot for Walnut Trees

Pollination is one of the most important factors in fruit production. Naturally, pollination is done by wind and insects. However, it may not be enough, due to the global natural pollinator decline and unstable weather conditions. Population growth and increased demand for agricultural products have led to use artificial pollination as a complementary method to improve this problem. Due to the dichogamy phenomenon and lack of sufficient pollen in the early years of walnut trees, this kind of pollination is needed. The advantages of using unmanned aerial systems (UASs), such as time saving, accessibility to impossible areas by humans, etc., have led experts to use them in agriculture. These systems are controlled by a pilot at the ground station or an autopilot system. In this paper, an aerial pollination quadrotor is introduced. The construction steps and parts are described. Additionally, the system is modeled in Ansys Fluent to perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation to predict pollen motion streams. Different simulations are performed and analyzed, in hovering flight and forward motion, with and without the presence of wind disturbances. The results of simulation show the quadrotor can do pollination successfully in the absence of wind disturbances. Fieldwork experiments are also performed, to investigate the performance of the manufactured robotic system.