Autonomous Pesticide Sprayer Robot

Abstract—The management of pest insects is the critical countries because of its promising a good returns but there is a
component of agricultural production especially in the fertigation resemblance of the problem faced by all these countries which
based farm. Although the fertigation farm in Malaysia has are in term of pest control.
advantages in the fertilization and irrigation management
system, it still lacking with the pest management system. Since In chili fertigation farms, pests such as mites, snails, and
almost the insect and pests are living under the crop’s leaves, it is maggots are a common type of pest that can be found in this
difficult and hard labor work to spray under the leaves of the farm by making the plants as their source of food and breeding
crop. Almost agricultural plants are damaged, weakened, or ground. In this case, pest invasion is an unavoidable
killed by insect pests especially. These results in reduced yields, circumstance but can be controlled by having pesticide
lowered quality, and damaged plants or plant products that spraying periodically. Normally, the worker needs to manually
cannot be sold. Even after harvest, insects continue their damage spray the pesticide while wearing protective gear and walking
in stored or processed products. Therefore, the aim of this study from crop to crop. This method indeed inefficient practice and
is to design and develop an autonomous pesticide sprayer for the hazardous chemicals used in spraying can be fatal to the
chili fertigation system. Then, this study intends to implement a worker even wearing protective gear because research
flexible sprayer arm to spray the pesticide under the crop’s conducted found that the protective gears do not stop the
leaves, respectively. This study involves the development of
chemical but only reduce the amount of exposure . Based on
unmanned pesticide sprayer that can be mobilized autonomously.
It is because the pesticide is a hazardous component that can be
the studies conducted also, The World Health Organization
affected human health in the future if it exposed during manual (WHO) estimates approximately about 3 million cases
spraying method especially in a closed area such as in the regarding pesticide poisoning which happened every year, thus
greenhouse. The flexible sprayer boom also can be flexibly causing the death of 220,000 people who especially live in
controlled in the greenhouse and outdoor environment such as developing countries .
open space farms. It is expected to have a successful pesticide
management system in the fertigation based farm by using the II. RELATED WORKS
autonomous pesticide sprayer robot. Besides, the proposed With flourishing technology that is introduced in this 21st
autonomous pesticide sprayer also can be used for various types century, there is numerous types of robots been used in
of crops such as rockmelon, tomato, papaya. pineapples, agricultural activity starting from the cultivation process to the
vegetables and etc. production process. The autonomous robot had been
introduced in various application such is in underwater , rescue,
Keywords—Pesticide spryer; autonomous robot; fertigation;
line following robot based on metal detection. In agriculture
farm; under crop leaves
field, the usage of robotics in agriculture operation able to help
I. INTRODUCTION to increase the production process and improve efficiency. One
of the types of the robot used in agriculture is for the purpose
The agriculture industry is growing from time to time as of pesticide spraying with the ability to navigate in the farm,
the demand on its yield abruptly rising in conjunction by the recognize the target and regulate the spraying mechanism. The
end of 2050, the agriculture yields are expected to be able to use of autonomous robot pesticide sprayer as the substitution of
support the rapid population growth. From this forecast, the the worker who used conventional pesticide sprayer can be
dependency on the agriculture yields to meet the population applicable.
growth is a concern because the world population is expected
to grow by over a third, or 2.5 billion people, between 2009 Besides, the demand for the agriculture robot also
and 2050 . For the countries that in the phase of developing, stimulates the consciousness of how important its role in the
the population grew significantly faster compared to the current and future generations. The survey conducted shows
countries that already developed hence result in the that the demand for robots and drones in agriculture will be
requirement on the feedstock that came from the agriculture expected to be rose from 2018 to 2038. Hence, the usage of the
yields. Agriculture industry become vastly practice all around autonomous robot is assumed to rise thus replacing the current
the globe by make use of the prosperous motherland with the labor worker. This granular 20 years market forecast covers all
diversity natural resource and geographical advantages, the the aspect of the agricultural robots and drones for 16 market
agriculture become applicable and acceptable to the certain categories with the expectation by the end of 2038 , the
market of the robots and drones in these categories is predicted be used for various types of crops such as rockmelon, tomato,
will close to 35 billion with the viable technology and ongoing papaya. pineapples, vegetables and etc.
market demand by considering its technology and application .
Nevertheless, the common problem with an autonomous III. HARDWARE CONFIGURATION
robot use in agricultural activity is the navigation method used A. System Construction
to able the robot fully-operated with decision making
The overall design of the autonomous pesticide spraying
capability. In order to navigate through all the field, there are
robot is illustrated in Fig. 1. The design is done using
some research has been done. It can be done through
Solidwork software and the development of the autonomous
infrstructure ready or to be without infrastructure. Some
pesticide spraying system based on the design. The
research on RFID based navigation are conducted to be
specification of the autonomous pesticide spraying robot is
implemented as navigation tools . As artificial intelligence
shown in Table I.
(AI) starts to emerge, the current robot should be able to
navigate the next movement by the adaptation of the The dimension of autonomous pesticide spraying robot is
surrounding environment and decide which path it will take. determined to be 122 cm (2 feet) because the size of the row
The typical method used in the detection is based on the for fertigation farm is about 3 feet. In addition, the height
targeted object orientation or repelled signal emits from the autonomous pesticide spraying robot is determined to be 2 m
sensor itself then calculates the distance in between it . Other because the normal height of the chili fertigation farm is below
than that, there is also the robot that uses the vision observation 2 m. The system overview for the autonomous pesticide
then accumulates all the acquired data to generate the data spraying system is illustrated in Fig. 2 shows an overall
fusion that enables the robot to navigate itself through the farm connection between two different systems that will be
. combined inside of the autonomous pesticide spraying robot.
The development of the autonomous pesticide sprayer
The second problem with the agricultural robot is due to
prototype consists of two parts where the navigation system
the dissemination of the pesticide to the crops. Unregulated
and the spraying system. The interconnection between the
spraying during the disposition of the pesticide to the crop can
selected components in the designed robot is crucial and plays
lead to the low rate of coverage on leaves, wastage of pesticide
a major role to make sure the robot function as desired.
and hazardous exposure to workers due to disperse pesticide to
Misconnection between the electronic components can lead to
the desired target . With regulated spraying by the pump, the
malfunction of the designed system thus deviated the operation
higher coverage of dissemination to the crops can be achieved
from achieving the project objective.
whereby the positioning of each crop was varied from one
another in the farm. Furthermore, instead of hiring the workers
to do miscellaneous work on the farm which can affect
themselves, it can be done by an autonomous agriculture robot
thus save the expenses on the labor worker .
Lastly, the designed robot used in agriculture having the
difference performance index depends on the variable they
want to achieve. Certain researchers may focus on UAV based
pesticide spraying, localization and motion control of
agriculture mobile robot, pest image identification and else .
This also same goes to the type of the plant being used as the
target which differs from one another in terms of size, leaves
density and height. Hence, it would be difficult to decide
which designed robot was most successful at the time being.
(a) Designed Autonomous Pesticide Sprayer.
In this research, the aim of this study is to design and
develop an autonomous pesticide sprayer for the chili
fertigation system. Then, this study intends to implement a
flexible sprayer arm to spray the pesticide under the crop’s
leaves, respectively. This study involves the development of
unmanned pesticide sprayer that can be mobilized
autonomously. It is because the pesticide is a hazardous
component that can be affected human health in the future if it
exposed during manual spraying method especially in a closed
area such as in the greenhouse. The flexible sprayer boom also
can be flexibly controlled in the greenhouse and outdoor
environment such as open space farms. It is expected to have a
successful pesticide management system in the fertigation
based farm by using the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot. (b) Developed Autonomous Pesticide
Besides, the proposed autonomous pesticide sprayer also can Sprayer. Fig. 1. System Construction.
 TABLE. I. AUTONOMOUS PESTICIDE SPRAYING ROBOT SPECIFICATION

Item Specification
Robot dimension 122 cm x 122 cm x 200 cm (L x W x H)
Robot weight 12 kg without payload
Drive system 4-wheeled drive system
Power supply 24V DC lead-acid rechargeable battery
Ground clearance 12 cm from the ground
Payload Max: 20 kg

Fig. 3. Arduino Mega 2560.

Fig. 4. HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor.

Besides, the four units of brushless DC motor are used for

Fig. 2. System Overview of Acceleration-based Movement Detection.
the four-wheeled driving system. The brushless DC motor
which is used is manufactured together with the tire that
B. Navigation System
normally applied in a hoverboard. The diameter of the tire
The navigation system consists of some ultrasonic sensor, which is selected is 25.4 cm to have higher ground clearance
microcontroller, four units of brushless DC motor with a motor about 12 cm. The higher ground clearance is important to pass
driver for each motor, and a 24 V DC rechargeable battery. The the irregular surface such as stone or rock along the path. To
microcontroller is the heart of the system where the designer facilitate the process of BLDC motor rotation and change its
can write and load the program into it to control the sequence direction of rotation, the motor driver is used. With the method
and operation of the peripheral that connected to its pin 12 in used for changing the direction of the motor wheels by the
the microcontroller. Using the programming software which motor driver, it also can be implemented to change the heading
has been predetermined, the coding will be uploaded into the and direction of the robot platform with the concept of the
microcontroller which will determine how the designed robot hoverboard drive. Hoverboard drive, in essence, use both tires
will be operated. In this project, the Arduino Mega 2560 will left and right to change the heading and direction of the robot
be used as shown in Fig. 3 because has adequate I/O pins for by manipulating the rotation of both tires.
input and output either analog and digital I/O.
For example, if the robot wants to turn to the right, the left
On the other hand, there are eight units of ultrasonic sensor tire is rotating forward while the right tire is rotating backward.
which is mounted at the edge of the frame and the center of This allowed the robot to have curve turning thus change its
each frame. The sensor is an important component in designing direction. The 3-phase supply and hall sensor of the BLDC
and developing the robot with the necessity to move and motor will be connected to the out pin and hall pin on motor
navigate itself without human intervention. It acts as eyes and driver respectively. The 12V battery will provide the supply to
ears which will retrieve the data or information from BLDC motor by connecting it to the VCC pin of the motor
surrounding before sending it to the brain, microcontroller to driver. After that, the ZF and VR pin on the motor driver will
be processed. , where all data were accumulated altogether to be connected to the Arduino Mega digital input pins to control
generate more accurate and consistent data. The ultrasonic the rotation and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to the BLDC
sensor operations are based on the distance calculated from the motor. Fig. 5 shows the hoverboard wheel with the brushless
time interval taken by the emitted sound wave to repel back to DC motor and the motor driver.
the receiver. The ultrasonic sensor which mounted at the center
of the frame is fixed perpendicularly 90° facing forward while
the ultrasonic sensors mounted at the edge, right and left
having 45° deflections each. This concept is referred from the
previous design which has been implemented in the wearable
device for the visually impaired person . Other than navigation
purposes, the ultrasonic sensors will be used to activate the
spraying system when the plants were detected in range. Fig. 4
shows the type of ultrasonic used in this prototype. (a) 3-Phase Brushless DC Motor (b) Motor Driver.
Fig. 5. Three-Phase Brushless DC Motor with Motor Diver.
Fig. 6. Connection for Controlling Motor after Ultrasonic Sensor Detection. Fig. 7. 12V/70W 130psi Diaphragm Pesticide Pump.

The connection of the microcontroller, Arduino Mega

2560, brushless DC motor through 36V/500W brushless motor
driver and received the power supply from 24V batteries
(2x12V battery in series) as shown in Fig. 6. The motor drivers
are able to manipulate the rotation of the motor using its phase
connected to the gate driver MOSFET on its circuit.
C. Spraying System
While the microcontroller executing the condition in the
navigation part, the condition for the spraying system also will
be considered. As the autonomous pesticide spraying robot
needs to be able to execute both of the operations
simultaneously, the sequence inside of the programming code
plays a critical role in the designed project. The main
components consist of the spraying system are reservoir tank,
pesticide pump, 2-channel relay circuit, tube and some mist Fig. 8. Connection for Activating after Ultrasonic Sensor Detection.
nozzles for spraying under the crop leaves. The reservoir tank
which is used in the autonomous pesticide spraying robot will IV. AUTONOMOUS PESTICIDE SPRAYER OPERATION
be filled with pesticide incapacity of 10L although the FLOWCHART
maximum of 20 kg of the payload can be carried out.
A. Navigation System Flowchart
In order to supply the pesticide from the reservoir tank to
the end of the spraying nozzle, the use of the 12V/ 70W 130 Based on the autonomous pesticide sprayer operation, the
psi diaphragm pesticide pump is selected is shown in Fig. 7. designed project is divided into two sub-disciplinary part
The selection of a pesticide pump is crucial because the pump which is the navigation and spraying system. Once the
needs to be eligible to push the pesticide out with desired autonomous pesticide sprayer robot activated, it will mobilize
pressure. With the help of the pump, spraying can be directly through the farm while considering all the operation which is
allocated to the desired targeted plants especially under the executed simultaneously. The designed project will be
crop leaves, by only giving electrical input to the pump which regarded to be close to the success after all the execution of the
procured by sensor upon detection of the plants. operation undergoes seamlessly and then the robot will be
evaluated based on its performance in measurable engineering
In term of connection, the microcontroller and the 12V/ variables. In order to allow the robot to follow the instruction
70W 130 psi pump was interconnected through 12V 2-channel in the programming code, it is important to identify each step
relay board where the relay will receive the input signal from that wants to be executed by the autonomous pesticide sprayer
the microcontroller to change its contact thus closed the circuit robot step by step as the robot will consider the condition in the
connection from battery to pump hence activating pump. Fig. 8 top step before moving to the bottom step. Fig. 9 shows the
shows a connection between microcontroller to pump. process flowchart inside of the navigation system to make the
robot move autonomously throughout the field.
 Fig. 10. Spraying System Flowchart.

V. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
As the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot needs to be
tested in the real working environment, the fertigation farm by
planting the chili using as the experimental setup environment.
The experiment setup in the fertigation farm with
approximately 100 chili plants is set. Fig. 11 shows the
experimental setup in the chili fertigation farm.
Fig. 9. Navigation System Flowchart. This experiment is performed to know the capability of the
sensor to detect the presence of the obstacles in front of it then
B. Spraying System Flowchart decide which way it will turn as its next route. The ultrasonic
On the other hand, while the microcontroller executing the sensor basically emits the soundwave thus received the
condition in the navigation system, the condition for the repelled soundwave as the signal. In this experiment, the sensor
spraying system also will be considered. As the autonomous distance will be recorded when the autonomous pesticide
pesticide sprayer robot needs to be able to execute both of the sprayer robot is moving. The value for front, right and left
operations simultaneously, so the sequence inside of the sensor when there is an obstacle versus the distance took by the
programming code plays a critical role in the designed project. robot along the path. The conceptual function for obstacle
Fig. 10 shows the process flowchart inside of the spraying detection to turn the navigation platform into left direction with
system including the. ultrasonic affixed 90°, 45° and 135° respectively is shown in
Fig. 12.
 was compared by the given condition in programming code
whereas based on which distance was the most farthest detect
an obstacle whether left or right sensor. If the left sensor
distance was highest means farther from obstacle compared to
the right one, the function for turning left will be called out in
the programs looping then executed or otherwise.
However, since the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot was
tested out to take a left turn in this experiment, the
measurement data between left sensor distance is 233.9 cm and
right sensor distance, 64.44 cm at this point. Later, the motor
will manipulate its direction through gate driver in motor driver
to take left turn and basically, the method used to change the
Fig. 11. Experimental Floor Layout in Chili Fertigation Farm. heading direction of the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot
was based on the combination of motor drive with differential
drive when to take left direction, the motor 1 and 3 will turn
backward with PWM speed of 80, while motor 2 and 4 will
turn forward with PWM speed of 200. Thus, this could allow
the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot to have some sort of
gliding effect during changing direction. The operation for
right-turning can be vice versa to left turning in terms of motor
direction turning and its speed. After the left turning with 90°
curve, the robot will stop at distance 717.91 cm due to
overshoot during turning and then take a backward step once
again for 5 s.

Fig. 12. The Conceptual Function of Sensor Detection in Turning.

VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

All the measurement data obtained from the ultrasonic
sensor on the autonomous pesticide sprayer robot in this
experiment are recorded and the moving path of the
autonomous pesticide sprayer robot is plotted into the graph as
shown in Fig. 13. The graph will be divided into three graphs
where represent the front, right and left sensor distance versus (a) The Distance of Path Taken by Robot vs Front Sensor Distance Detection.
the distance of path taken mutually. The experimental method
which is applied has been referred from previous works
conducted . As shown in Fig. 13. the starting point for the
autonomous pesticide sprayer robot started at 3000 cm from
the end of the junction. So, the max detection from the front
sensor should be below the 300 cm which will become closer
as the robot moving forward and farther as the robot moving
backward. In Fig. 13, only at point of condition’s occurred will
be shown as the data was too many to display such as in here it
got starting, detection, stopping, turning and ending point in
highlighted color which is orange for starting point of the (b) The Distance of Path Taken by Robot vs Left Sensor Distance Detection.
detection, blue for stop detection point, red for actual stopping
point, green for start left-turning point and grey for ending
point of the detection.
The developed autonomous pesticide sprayer robot was
tested to stop at the point of detection by front sensor which is
below 150 cm but due to BLDC motor can not instantaneously
stop its rotation due to its characteristic of brushless that do not
have braking system and also cause by inertia acts upon it,
there will be overshoot of autonomous pesticide sprayer robot
movement before it was fully stopped at distance 305.03 cm.
After fully stop, the robot will take a backward step with delay (c) The Distance of Path Taken by Robot vs Left Sensor Distance
5 s until it reaches 227.28 cm from the stopping point. Then, at Detection. Fig. 13. Measurement Data from the Ultrasonic Sensor for
this point, the value of distance for the left and the right sensor Autonomous
Pesticide Sprayer Robot.
 Based on the experimental results shown, the navigation
system for an autonomous pesticide sprayer robot is
successfully conducted. The autonomous pesticide sprayer
robot could navigate autonomously throughout the
experimental field.
VII. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE TASKS
As a conclusion, in order to design and develop an
autonomous pesticide spraying for a fertigation farm has
successfully conducted. All the subsystem such as navigation
systems and spraying systems are included. Although the
navigation part has been tested, the autonomous pesticide
sprayer robot can be self-navigate by turning at the junction by
using the obstacles detection concept inside the fertigation
farm. The ultrasonic sensors were used which for front sensor
it was adjacently facing forward in 90° while the other two left
and right both facing forward with deflection 45°. The
ultrasonic sensor could detect the obstacles and stop without
hitting the obstacles, respectively.
For future works, the spraying pressure of the autonomous
pesticide sprayer robot will be tested and the electronic circuits
need a waterproof structure since the autonomous pesticide
sprayer robot deals with a pesticide which is fluid. Therefore,
the isolation of the electronic component should be done well
by separating each electronic component in the container box
to prevent it from being damaged if the flooding or leakage
happened inside the robot. On the other hand, the pest
monitoring system should be developed to be an auto-
monitoring device while spraying the pesticide.