Agricultural Drone Sprayer

Overview

An agricultural drone sprayer is a heavy-lift multirotor UAV that applies pesticide, herbicide or liquid fertiliser to crops from the air. Flying low above the canopy, it sprays steep terrain, flooded paddies and standing crops that ground machinery cannot enter, and treats fields without compacting soil or crushing plants. The machine balances a foldable Composite Airframe against a chemical payload that nearly equals its own empty weight.

Lift comes from eight Propulsion Unit units, each a large outrunner motor, ESC and propeller. A central Flight Controller coordinates them for stable, autonomous flight.

How it works

The flight controller runs an autopilot fed by an IMU, barometer and an RTK GNSS receiver giving centimetre-level position. With a surveyed field boundary loaded, the drone flies parallel swaths automatically, throttling individual rotors to hold attitude and track. An Obstacle Sensing System package adds terrain-following radar that keeps the aircraft a fixed height above an uneven canopy, plus a forward camera for obstacle avoidance.

The Spraying System carries the liquid in a chemical-resistant tank, drives it with redundant diaphragm pumps, and atomises it through rotary nozzles whose spinning discs shear the flow into uniform fine droplets. A flow meter closes the loop, holding application rate constant regardless of ground speed.

Power is a swappable Smart Battery Pack with an integrated BMS; packs are hot-swapped between sorties to keep the machine working while the tank is refilled. The Power Distribution Board splits pack power to the eight ESCs and avionics. A Telemetry Datalink datalink streams telemetry to the Remote Controller ground station, from which the operator supervises the mission and can take manual command.