Abstract
With changing climate and farmland ecological conditions, pest outbreaks in agricultural landscapes are becoming more frequent, increasing the need for improved crop production tools and methods. UAV-based agricultural spraying is anticipated to be an important new technology for providing efficient and effective applications of crop protection products. This paper reviews and summarizes the status of the current research and progress on UAV application technologies for plant protection, and it discusses the characteristics of atomization by unmanned aircraft application systems with a focus on spray applications of agrichemicals. Additionally, the factors influencing the spraying performance including downwash airflow field and operating parameters are analyzed, and a number of key technologies for reducing drift and enhancing the application efficiency such as remote sensing, variable-rate technologies, and spray drift models are considered. Based on the reviewed literature, future developments and the impacts of these UAV technologies are projected. This review may inspire the innovation of the combined use of big data analytics and UAV technology, precision agricultural spraying technology, drift reduction technology, swarm UAV cooperative technology, and other supporting technologies for UAV-based aerial spraying for scientific research in the world. Keywords: UAV, plant protection, spraying technology, drift reduction, pesticide efficacy, spraying model, big data analytics DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20211401.5714 Citation: Chen H B, Lan Y B, Fritz B K, Hoffmann W C, Liu S B. Review of agricultural spraying technologies for plant protection using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2021; 14(1): 38–49.
Highlights
According to the “Agriculture in 2050 Project”, the world population will reach about 10 billion by 2050
The results indicated that site-specific management resulted in a 45% reduction of the application rate when compared with conventional spray application
The results showed that depending on the deployed spray method, the swath width used and the flight pattern flown, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) spray application could achieve 2.0 to 4.5 hm2/h work rates while applying the volume of 14.0 to 39.0 L/hm2
Summary
According to the “Agriculture in 2050 Project”, the world population will reach about 10 billion by 2050. The new circumstances of modern agricultural construction are those making agriculture realize the goal of high yield, high quality, high efficiency, ecology and safety, realizing green consumption and sustainable development, and building resource-saving and environmentalfriendly agriculture It is crucial for aerial application of pesticides to be environmentally protective and efficacious[21], and new technologies are required for the effective delivery of pesticides and agrochemicals by using UAV. Vortices that are generated by the rotor tips can cause pesticide droplets to be lifted above the aircraft, increasing the potential for drift These effects have been the focus of numerous studies about the downwash flow field through the use of spatial quality balance, numerical analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, a few of which are discussed . Zheng et al.[50] simulated and numerically analyzed the downwash flow fields of a multi-rotor UAV intended for practical spraying operations at different hovering heights by establishing a full-scale physical model. A smaller distance between the nozzle and rotor tip resulted in a larger droplet drift behind the fuselage and a larger spray amplitude
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