Algorithms for Calculating the Trajectory of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Solving Agricultural Problems

Abstract

The relevance of using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is substantiated in comparison with other methods of aerospace survey. The paper provides examples of tasks requiring the use of UAVs for aerial photography from different heights. It is shown that the introduction of agricultural robots, including UAVs, increases the speed of fi eld work, allows obtaining unique data necessary for the assessment of agricultural territories, crops processing and plant growth stimulation. It is noted that the problem of constructing the movement trajectories of a multirotor UAV for performing agricultural tasks within a minimum time limit remains unresolved. (Research purpose) To reduce the length of the trajectory covering a given area and reduce the flight time of a multirotor UAV, taking into account the analysis of possible obstacles and land plots that are beyond the task scope. (Materials and methods) Geometric methods have been used to calculate the UAV flight trajectory covering a given section, the trajectory of movement in an environment with obstacles to the designated point. Photogrammetry methods have been used for processing aerial photography images when forming an orthophotoplane and a terrain map. (Results and discussion) The trajectory calculated by the developed algorithm proves to meet all the requirements: it is continuous, has a minimum number of turns, it is smoothed, and feasible for a multirotor UAV. (Conclusions) It was determined that according to the proposed algorithm it takes less than 0.05 seconds to calculate the trajectory covering a rectangular section with the sides of 200 by 30 meters. It was found that the trajectory in the fi rst 10,200-square-meter section decreased by 9 percent, and in the second 950,000-square-meter section it reduced by 6 percent, compared with the length of the trajectory built using standard algorithms. The flight time reduced by 32 and 10 percent, respectively. The paper presents the key advantages of using UAV for video shooting such as: guaranteed high resolution of photographic materials and the ability to shoot at a given time, allowing for the crop condition assessment.