Develop an unmanned aerial vehicle based automatic aerial spraying system

•An unmanned aerial vehicle based automatic control spraying system was designed.•A highly integrated micro-computer with an independent functional module was used.•Plenty of experiments was performed to show the effectiveness of this system.•A minimum coefficient of variation was 25%, when flying at common work environment.

To perform plant-protection operations, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based automatic control spraying system was designed in China. The system used a highly integrated and ultra-low power MSP430 single-chip micro-computer with an independent functional module. This allowed route planning software to direct the UAV to the desired spray area. The test results of route precision showed that in a 3-4 m/s crosswind, route deviations were around 0.2 m. The result of multiple-spraying swath uniformity tests showed a minimum coefficient of variation of 25% when flying at a height of 5 m with a spraying swath of 7 m and a wind speed of 0-2 m/s. When the spraying swath was 9 m or 5 m, the coefficients were 34% and 41%, respectively. Spray uniformity for these UAV tests were superior to the Standard Requirement for ultra-low volume spraying variation coefficient, 60%.