DEVELOPMENT OF REMOTE CONTROL OPERATED SENSOR BASED SITE SPECIFIC CHEMICAL APPLICATOR
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Date
2022-08-18
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guntur
Abstract
Plant protection is one of the important aspects of agriculture which helps to increase farm productivity as well as profit generated per hectare. Crop protection chemicals play a vital role in protecting the crop from insects, fungus, viruses, and weeds. In the conventional spraying system, there is no cut-off mechanism to avoid spraying between plants due to which liquid chemical flows continuously from the nozzles on the plant canopy and in void space which results in 50 - 60 % of wastage in applied chemicals and increases disease control costs. The operator being exposed to hazardous chemicals, wastage of chemical inputs, and degradation of the environment were serious issues with the conventional methods of chemical application.
The present study was conducted on the development and performance evaluation of self-propelled remote control operated sensor-based site-specific chemical applicator. The remote-control unit helps to operate the developed chemical applicator from without entering in to the field and the sensors help to spray exactly on the target (plant canopy) and avoid in the void space between the plants. Before developing the chemical applicator, all the required components were drawn and assembled in Solidworks software for fabrication accuracy. The developed chemical applicator was evaluated under laboratory and field conditions. During field evaluation, Chilli crop was chosen to test the developed chemical applicator. Before chemical application Water sensitive papers (WSP) named L1(top), L2(middle) and L3(bottom) were placed vertically on the canopy and WSP named L4 and L5 were placed horizontally on the soil surface at inter canopy region. Results obtained for developed chemical applicator were compared using with activation and without activation of sensors. ImageJ software was used for image analysis to find droplet size, density and percentage of area covered on crop. Cost economics of developed chemical applicator were also determined.
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During evaluation, it was observed that the maximum detection range of three ultrasonic sensors was not uniform due to variation in frequency. So, to have a uniform detection range was adjusted to 65 cm. The average forward speed of the chemical applicator was 2.19 km h-1. The average discharge of the boom was 0.653 l min-1. It was observed that after 105 minutes of operation the voltage was dropped to 16.7 and further drop in voltage was not sufficient to propel the developed and took nearly 360 minutes to charge the discharged batteries.
The droplet size, density and spray coverage were similar at L1, L2 and L3 locations of WSP during application of chemical with and without activation of sensors. The droplet size, density and spray coverage at L4 and L5 varied from 197.69 to 207.01 μm, 150.67 to 18.33 droplets per cm2 and 11.41 to 3.37 % during application of chemical with and without activation of sensors. The application rate of chemicals reduced from 151.22 l ha-1 to 73.32 l ha-1 when operated with activation of sensors. The actual field capacity and field efficiency of the developed chemical applicator was 0.263 ha h-1 and 61.73 %. The cost of operation of the developed chemical applicator for Chilli crop was 125 Rs h-1. The developed remote-control unit works satisfactorily in reducing the risk of exposure to harmful chemicals during spraying by the operator. The sensor based chemical applicator unit also worked satisfactorily for real time site specific chemical application and prevented excess use of chemicals and contamination of environment.
Keywords: Ultrasonic sensors; site specific applicator; Image analysis; Object sensing; cost economics.
Description
DEVELOPMENT OF REMOTE CONTROL OPERATED SENSOR BASED SITE SPECIFIC CHEMICAL APPLICATOR