Sampling in precision agriculture: A software for navigation in field activities

Abstract

The use of mobile devices in agricultural activities (such as smartphones and tablets) is still incipient; however, they can be used in several field activities, such as land demarcation, data recording and sample point location in Precision Agriculture (PA) due to their processing capacity, mobility and integrated geolocation systems. In addition to their lower cost compared to commercial low-cost GNSS equipment used for this purpose, these devices present more attractive features and resources. This study aimed to develop an application for mobile devices to generate paths for the location of georeferenced sample points by importing data in text format. Two algorithms were evaluated to generate the walking paths (Greedy and Simulated Annealing) and a path generated by an expert. To ensure the accuracy of the results, the precision of a smartphone and a low-cost GNSS equipment were evaluated using an RTK station. The tests with the application proved the similarity of the smartphone with other commercial low-precision devices. The device accuracy can used in data collection activities for PA, especially when working with Management Zones (MZs) where precision is not a limiting factor because it is a method that aims to make PA concepts viable, even using machines and equipment from conventional agriculture.