Robotic Spraying Machine

Abstract

There are various pesticide sprayers available in market. These spraying techniques are very tedious and time taking.

Purpose is to make an affordable pesticide spraying machine. As we know that India is an agriculture based country and main business in rural areas is farming and to boost the income of farmers the productivity of crops must be increased. Hence our project tries to improve the pesticide spraying techniques.

Through this paper, an attempt has been suggested to improve the method of spraying the pesticide to enhance the productivity and increase the farmer’s income.

In this paper our aim is to explain the mechanism of bot which will be operated by the farmer through remote so that the farmer is not in direct contact with harmful pesticides. On the command from the remote the spraying action will be controlled. The pesticide sprayer would operate with minimal pollution. The model would have 2 nozzle pesticides sprayer DC pump which will perform spraying at maximum rate in minimum time.

Key Words: Nozzle, DC Pump, Remote

Introduction

Agriculture is the backbone of our India. Major contribution in our economy is done by the agricultural production. Farming techniques has advanced equipment in market but at the same time the cost of those instruments are very high. Due to this modern day techniques we can improve the productivity. But in traditional farming the instruments were not so much advanced. With the help of innovations the modern day instruments have become a boon for farmers which reduce the human efforts and time.

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So our task is to provide an affordable solution to farmers which will be helpful is pesticide spraying. The power we produce from infinite sources is not able to give constant supply. The crop cultivating machines works on the finite power source. The aim of our project is to reduce the labour cost and eliminate the human efforts by improving the spraying mechanism and the constant flow of pesticides. Our bot is a 4 wheeled structure which will be operated by remote control to give commands for spraying and movement. 2 Nozzles are provided to spray the pesticides on both the direction this saves the time and energy.

Problem Statement

As we know that agriculture is the lifeline of our Country and it provides the most employment and profit to the nation. But we have seen that current state of agriculture is not quite the same. The farmers and other agriculture related people are suffering a lot. Considering the problems which are faced by the farmers in the agriculture industry which includes physical strains on the body we as engineers need to design a solution to this. We have seen that due to pesticide spraying the farmers face lot of physical as well as respiratory problems. So we have proposed a pesticide spraying machine which will reduce manual work of farmers and save them from respiratory problems. Our bot is a cost effective solution and will help the farmers and can be used even by small scale farmers. The most important thing being that this will help us provide our contribution as engineers towards the overall improvement in an important area related to development of our country. Also as we have observed that robotics is the way forward towards a better future. Thus, this robotic spraying machine will be of great use.

Analysis

The basic criterion behind making this robotic spraying machine was to make a system that can be operated easily by even the less educated farmers. So for that purpose we have tries to keep the design as simple as possible and also used components which help us to reduce the overall costing of the system.

We can say that the design of such a bot will always have 2 parts. First being the mechanical part which will see the designing of the bot and second the Electronics part. So the mechanical part needed to be done keeping in mind the fact that the bot needs to travel effectively on rough terrains of farm. Thus, the motor used is such that high torque is generated so that it can travel through the farm efficiently. It has been placed in such a way that it helps transmit maximum power and for that purpose we have used Monster Motor Driver which helps in proper power transmission and synchronous movement of both motors to drive the bot. Also wheels used are such that it would not stick in the muddy surface. Along with this the overall structure of the bot is designed in a way that the bot remains sturdy and can carry load easily. The fabrication of our bot mainly uses mild steel and wooden ply that have been given a proper structure using the help of welding technology. The last part was the spraying mechanism for which we have used a DC pump for continuous flow of the pesticide and nozzle for actual spraying.

Now moving on to the electronics part. This can basically be divided into two parts. It consists of a remote which will work for transmission of data. With the help of this data the farmer can control in which design the bot needs to go and when to spray the pesticide. Basically it is an idea which has been taken from the remote controlled cars going around. The receiver contains a PCB designed for receiving the signal properly and following the commands. It is mounted on the bot itself.

Working

The system has two parts namely, hardware and software. The hardware architecture consists of an embedded system that is based on ATmega8 microcontroller and ATmega16 microcontroller, a HC-12 trans-receiver module (RF-module), motor driver. The HC-12 provides the communication media between the user through the RF remote and the system by means of command given to the bot. The user controls the desired command to the BOT that is connected through RF remote using HC-12 (RF module). The command is converted to an array of strings and the string is passed to the RF module, the module receives the message, the command sent will be extracted and executed by the microcontroller attached to it and depending on the commands fed to the motor driver, the motor’s will function accordingly. The system will interpret the commands and control the robot accordingly via RF Module. Motor driver or Motor Driver module which allows DC motor to drive on either direction will be used. Two DC motors which will be used to operate 4 wheels of the machine simultaneously in any direction (If in future we require more power to drive the bot then we will add to motors as per required specifications along with another motor driver module). It means that we can control two DC motor with a single motor driver module. Two switches are used in the circuit, one is to ON-OFF the circuit and the other one is to reset. Along with that in the RF remote there will be 5 keys which will decide in which direction we need to move the bot. 4 buttons are used for moving bot in 4 directions and the 5th button is for switching the sprinkler on and off.

Result and Conclusion

As the command is given from the transmitter side the bot will move accordingly with the help of battery provided in the bot. The operator is at some distance from the bot so the chance of harmful effects on health is reduced. The efficiency of the spraying is improve as compared to previous methods.

These are the conclusions drawn:

1. It has been observed that the current method used for spraying which includes carrying the spraying machine on back causes various health issues to the worker like back pain and respiratory problems due to poisonous pesticide.
2. So the idea proposed in this project seems to be the alternative solution for above mentioned problem.
3. If we compare the previous machine with our proposed idea then it is found that it has various advantages in terms of efficiency, safety, spraying coverage area.

References

1. Shailesh Malonde , Shubham Kathwate, Pratik Kolhe, Gaurav Tule, Nishant ingole, Rupesh Khorgade “Design, development of Multipurpose Pesticide Spraying Machine”,“International journal of Advance Engineering and Global Technology”,ISSN No:2309-4893 volume-04, Issue-03,(May-2016).
2. Rajashekhargoud Angadi, Rohit L G, Satish Changond, Santosh Kagale “Cam Operated Agrochemical Pesticide Sprayer” “International journal of Engineering Research & Technology”, ISSN No:2278-0181 volume-06, Issue-01,January-2017. https://www.elprocus.com/atmega8-microcontroller/
3. A research paper on “Fabrication of Portable Foot Operated Agricultural Fertilizers and Pesticides Spraying Pump” by S R Kulkarni, R V Nyamagoud, Hareesh Naik, Mohan Futane
4. R. D. Fox, R. C. Derksen, “Visual and image system measurement of spray deposits using water–sensitive paper” Applied Engineering in Agriculture Vol. 19(5): 549–552 2003 American Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN 0883–8542
5. A research paper on “Review of Solar Powered Pesticide Sprayer” by Sarvesh Kulkarni, Karan Hasurkar, Ramdas Kumbhar, Amol Gonde, Raut A.S.