Over the last decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have been broadly utilized in various agricultural fields, such as crop management, crop monitoring, seed sowing, and pesticide spraying. Nonetheless, autonomy is still a crucial limitation faced by the Internet of Things (IoT) UAV systems, especially when used as sprayer UAVs, where data needs to be captured and preprocessed for robust real-time obstacle detection and collision avoidance. Moreover, because of the objective and operational difference between general UAVs and sprayer UAVs, not every obstacle detection and collision avoidance method will be sufficient for sprayer UAVs. In this regard, this article seeks to review the most relevant developments on all correlated branches of the obstacle avoidance scenarios for agricultural sprayer UAVs, including a UAV sprayer’s structural details. Furthermore, the most relevant open challenges for current UAV sprayer solutions are enumerated, thus paving the way for future researchers to define a roadmap for devising new-generation, affordable autonomous sprayer UAV solutions. Agricultural UAV sprayers require data-intensive algorithms for the processing of the images acquired, and expertise in the field of autonomous flight is usually needed. The present study concludes that UAV sprayers are still facing obstacle detection challenges due to their dynamic operating and loading conditions.

Overview of the aeroponic agriculture – An emerging technology for global food security

Autonomous sprayer UAVs are one of the most used aerial machines in modern agriculture. During flight missions, some common narrow obstacles appear in the flying zone. These are non-detectable from satellite images and one of the biggest challenges for autonomous sprayer UAVs in farmland. This work introduces an obstacle avoidance architecture specifically for sprayer UAVs. This architecture has generality in the spraying UAV problem, and it reduces the reliance on the global mapping of farmland. This approach computes the avoiding path based on the onboard sensor fusion system in real-time. Moreover, it autonomously determines the transition of several maneuver states using the current spraying liquid data and the UAV dynamics data obtained by offline system identification. This approach accurately tracks the avoidance path for the nonlinear time-variant spraying UAV systems. To verify the performance of the approach, we performed multiple simulations with different spraying missions, and the method demonstrated a high spraying coverage of more than 98% while successfully avoiding all vertical obstacles. We also demonstrated the adaptability of our control architecture; the safe distance between the UAV and obstacles can be changed by specifying the value of a high-level parameter on the controller. The proposed method adds value to precision agriculture, reduces mission time, and maximizes the spraying area coverage.

Research shows that the accurate acquisition of flight parameters of the plant protection UAV and accurate evaluation of flight parameter quality have great significance for improving the effect and precision of spraying. In order to further improve the accuracy of the flight parameter quality evaluation of the plant protection UAV, this study conducted an evaluation and experiment of the flight parameter quality of the plant protection UAV using a laser tracker. The experimental results showed that the current plant protection UAV used the average altitude and speed of the onboard sensors to determine whether it reached the preset flight operation parameters, but this interpretation method could not accurately reflect the actual flight situation. Laser trackers could obtain more accurate flight parameters, especially instantaneous flight parameters. Compared with the laser tracker, the flight trajectory, altitude, and speed of the UAV reflected by onboard sensors were erroneous and tended to be smooth and stable. This method can obtain more accurate flight parameters, improve the accuracy of the flight parameter quality evaluation of the plant protection UAV, and provide data support and a reference for the precision spraying and performance improvement of the plant protection UAV.

Discrete element method simulation of disc type furrow openers in paddy soil