Study of field capacity and variables of UAV operation time during spraying hormone fertilizer in sugarcane field

Abstract

Spraying fertilizer to improve sugar content using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is receiving lot of interest by farmers since the field conditions are almost inaccessible by ground at the appropriate period of application. However, operators have to decide based on theirs experiences to choose the applicable and profitable field for UAV sprayer as the operation time and cost. This study aims to investigate UAV field capacity and time consumed by all steps during operation. The spraying experiments were conducted in fields located in Chaiyaphom and Khon Kaen province with the area of 0.16-0.64 ha/field. The field capacities were evaluated and time consuming activities of flight planning, fertilizer filling, active and passive working were studied. The results showed the average field capacity is 3.36 ha/hr. Most of time consumption was for flight planning step, followed by fertilizer filling, and passive working such as take-off time, landing time and turning time. Time consumed in flight planning was caused by the attempt to avoid the trees around field. However, it takes a long time only for first flight and then previously generated flight plan can be re-used for next flight. Moreover, non-rectangular shape and small size of fields affected passive working time directly.