Development Of Variable Rate Sprayer Research Articles

Development of variable rate sprayer for oil palm plantation

Development of variable rate sprayer for oil palm plantationThis project describes the design and development of a camera vision with color detection for the variable rate technology (VRT) automated sprayer. In this project, the smart sprayer system was already developed and mounted on the ATV. The automated sprayer system was developed by combination of the electromechanical system, PC parallel port relay board, the controller and visual basic programming software. This smart sprayer system is guided with the camera to detect the presence of weeds. Detection of weeds is based on the green color value from RGB value. The amount or percentage (%) of weeds detected determines the rate of spraying that is controlled by an electric motor and the relay board. In this project, the spray nozzles were modified to be fully open, fully closed and half open. The closing and opening of valves were controlled by the electromechanical system that receives the instruction from the camera vision. Experiments carried out shows that the nozzle is closed when the percentage of weeds detected is less than 2%. It is half open at 3% to 50% and fully open at more than 51%. The application rate of spraying can be determined from the result of the spraying operation.

Variable Rate Sprayer Development and Evaluation

A variable rate chemical application system was developed to accommodate the spatial variability that occurs in a field. A pressure-based system using a Campbell Scientific, Inc. (CSI) 21X micrologger as the controller and dead reckoning for vehicle location was used. The system was tested using four treatments with five application rate changes per treatment. Three parameters were used to evaluate the system: response distance, percent overshoot, and performance index. The system was found to perform adequately, but could be improved with a more sophisticated control algorithm and more appropriate hardware.