Unmanned systems and experience of their application in agriculture

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is booming in almost every sector of the economy, especially in the agricultural industry. According to some reports, the agricultural UAV market is expected to increase from USD 2.6 billion in 2020 to USD 9.5 billion in 2030. In this paper a brief overview devoted to the use of UAVs in the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy (RSAU-MTAA), including the results of studying the equipment use effectiveness for automatic driving of tractor equipment when sowing grain crops and planting potatoes. In the course of studying the equipment use effectiveness for automatic driving of tractor equipment, the deviations of the guess row spacing from the standard row spacing provided for by the seeder design were established; in the case of sowing barley using a marker, it was up to 4.3 cm, and in the case of winter wheat it was up to 5 cm. When using the autopilot system, these values were no more than 1.5 and 2.3 cm, respectively, which indicates the high accuracy and efficiency of the automatic driving systems. The autopilot system use provided a deviation of adjacent rows from the straightness when planting potatoes from 2.8 to 3.0 cm. The paper concludes that the use of unmanned robotic systems in agriculture, in conjunction with modern means of receiving and processing information, opens up new opportunities for increasing agriculture efficiency.