Electrostatic spraying for controlling agricultural pests

Prof. Dr  Murtadha Jaleel Almamury

Department of Applied Geography

It has become clear that electrostatic spraying yields more coverage area and deep penetration in the spatial canopy of plants compared to conventional systems. Despite researchers having used this technology in order to improve nozzle efficiency, performance and uniform distribution deposition on the targets, there are still large amounts of money and huge quantities of pesticides wasted, because the leaves that do not need remediation are still being treated by farmers and workers. This condition can be controlled by targeting the infested 10  area only, thus giving large reductions in wasted chemical materials, which would result in decreased environmental pollution and better utilization of financial resources. This research has addressed the gap in knowledge regarding the development of a more efficient spraying system than those presently available. Specifically, smart pesticide spraying system was developed with a nozzle attached to the gripper of a mobile robot along with a CCD camera for locating insect positions on plant leaves. After positioning the nozzle so as to target pests within its spraying range, the machine delivers short bursts of pesticide spray to exterminate them without subjecting non-infested parts of the plants to the chemical. A novel induction charging electrostatic spray nozzle capable of generating pulsed charged sprays was designed using COMSOL. Computer simulation of electric fields helped to identify the optimal induction electrode geometry needed. The fan spray nozzle housing was designed and fabricated using 3D printing. This nozzle is capable of producing short duration pulsed spray of a desired amount to cover the pests location without unwanted over spraying and soil contamination.

A mobile robot system was constructed from kits supplied by Lynxmotion™ and the computing system was arranged with a master-slave approach. The slave computer receives robot motion, nozzle positioning and spraying action commands from the master computer. The master computer sends a series of motion commands that move the attached camera in a search path that assists in locating a given type of pest. Once the targets to be exterminated have been selected by processing the received images from the CCD camera attached next to the spraying nozzle, the nozzle is put into the correct position and a burst of pesticide is applied. The master computer is a Windows-based notebook computer while the slave computer is an Arduino mega 2560 microcontroller board along with additional circuitries and hardware that assist in operating the smart nozzle system.

There are different skills requirements between operators working in the two different fields. Regarding electrostatic painting, the equipment is usually maintained by a full-time technician and the spraying is carried out by a skilled operator. While in the context of agriculture, pesticide spraying is only one of a number of operations that a farmer must carry out and thus, the equipment must be simple to operate, extremely robust, and reliable.

THE NEW ELECTROSTATIC INDUCTION SYSTEM