Autonomous Vtol agro-drone

Agriculture is considered as a back bone of Indian economy with over 60% of the population engaged in agricultural activities in some form or the other. However due to primitive agricultural practices, lack of labor and urbanization the agricultural output is below par when compared to those countries whose main occupation is not agriculture. And in today's scenario the main problem India is facing is shortage of agricultural labor. So this situation calls for incorporation of automation in agriculture and one such effort has been undertaken in this project to pool in agriculture with aeronautics using AUTONOMOUS VTOL AGRO-DRONE. Due to agricultural pesticides exposure around 2.2million people located in developing nations are at a risk. Pesticides may enter the human body easily through inhalation, ingestion, or by dermal penetration through the skin. Now a day the people who work with agricultural pesticides are the most at risk if they are not properly dressed or if there are broken and leaking equipment. Hence the approach of this project is to develop a prototype model of Autonomous AGRO-DRONE to facilitate the farmers wherein a click of a button would spray the pesticides. The farmer need not dirty his hands to spray pesticides but instead can sit comfortably in his farm and monitor the entire process with the help of the surveillance system installed in the model. The Tilt-Rotor mechanism incorporated in this model enables it to perform both conventional take off and VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing). By this feature the AGRO-DRONE is empowered to operate in congested farm fields and remote areas where conventional take off cannot be achieved. The autonomous control fitted to the model facilitates auto piloting, path finding, path calculation, area& distance calculation. The pressurized tank system provided at the under carriage initiates the spraying of pesticides through the nozzle provided. Thus the complete automation of the AGRO-DRONE helps the farmer to carry out pesticide spraying and virtual crop monitoring in the real time, thereby reducing time, effort and cost. AGRO-DRONE is operated by using a 16000 mAh Li-Po battery. First the current from the battery flows to the 4 motors through ESCs. Then the motor drives the propellers to provide the required forward thrust/lift. The fuselage carries the pesticide tank, compressor & sprinkler to spray the pesticide by drawing the power from the same battery. Camera is fitted at the nose for crop monitoring and surveillance.