International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)

Volume 167 – No.3, June 2017

Remotely Operated Pesticide Sprayer Robot in

Agricultural Field

Shubhangi B. Londhe K. Sujata

Student ME VLSI & Embedded HOD of E&TC Department
System, Shree Ramchandra College of Shree Ramchandra College of
Engineering, Lonikand, Pune, India Engineering, Lonikand, Pune

ABSTRACT the assigned task is termed as action and mapping the field
Despite the focus on industrialization, agriculture remains a with its features is mapping. All four categories are
dominant sector of the Indian economy both in terms of independent. An automatic vehicle which is used for main or
contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) as well as a secondary agricultural task is said to be a service unit [2-4].
source of employment to millions across the country. An intelligent master-slave system between the agricultural
Agriculture plays a vital role in the Indian economy. Over 70 vehicles developed a semi-autonomous agricultural vehicle
per cent of the rural households depend on agriculture as their (slave) to follow a leading tractor (master) with a given lateral
principal means of livelihood. But an attack of pest in crops is and longitudinal offset [2]. A Small unmanned autonomous
one of the major problems to reduce the production growth in vehicle was developed to acquire aerial hypersprectral data,
agriculture field. To deal with this kind of problem diagnosis low-cost, small, lightweight hyperspectral sensor system that
of crop disease is very essential. This paper presents an can be loaded onto it [3].
engineering solution to tackle this kind of problem in which
an automatic pesticide sprayer is involved to spray the This system works efficiently even under unstable
pesticide to the localized area of the affected crops. This illumination conditions. A vehicle capable of detecting
system is based on sprayer filled with pesticides. The Sprayer obstacles on its way and adjusting its seed was developed for
movement is controlled by DC motor at low velocity, up & tree fruit orchards [4]. This paper contains the methodology
down direction according to plant height. The design deals which was based on the classification and clustering of
with three modules image capturing, processing and automatic registered 3D points as obstacles. Robots implemented with
pesticide spraying. The proposed system can remotely RTK-GPS sensors and Wi-Fi was devised which focused on
operate through any electronic device like mobile, laptop etc. the control of several robot with respect to a reference
trajectory, which was computed off-line. In this work non-
Keywords linear transformations permit to achieve a total decoupled
Pesticide Sprayer, Robot, Dc motor, camera, Laptop, mobile model [5]. In this system the Process of applying chemicals
etc. can be controlled by means of wireless sensor network
deployed on the agriculture field [6]
1. INTRODUCTION
In India agriculture is the main source of income for Indian 2. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
population which include almost 60 percent of Indian
population. Agriculture where farmers work in their field to ANALYSIS
cultivate different kind of crops according to climate and In the proposed system robotics model provides a facility to
resources. To deal with this kind of food demand for such control the movement of agriculture vehicle. The quality and
huge population, farmers has to use large quantity of quantity of agricultural products can reduce by Plant diseases
pesticides for increasing the food production. The productivity which have produced an enormous post effect scenario. Early
of crop is affected by other major biological parameter such as pest detection is a major issue dealt with the plantation crops.
pest, disease and this parameter can be control by human First step involves in keen and regular observation of plants.
being for improving production of crop. But it is very harmful Then the diseased plants will be classified and the affected
procedure for farmers when they spray pesticide, they have to part of the plants images will be acquired using camera. These
take too many precautions like wearing suitable outfit, gloves images are then subjected to pre-processing, transformation
and masks etc. For getting best solutions in such cases use of and clustering. Then, these images are given as input to the
robots is very imminent technological solution which processor, and the processor will compare the images. If the
improves productivity and efficiency. It becomes cost image given is affected image, then an automatic pesticide
effective technological solution. sprayer is involved to spray the pesticide to the localized area
in the leaf. If not, the processors will automatic discard it and
The elevation in the field of robotics has widened in different the robot will move further.
applications which extends from home automation to military.
Continuous monitoring of agriculture field is possible due to AUTOMATIC
automatic performance of agricultural vehicle which resulted INPUT IMAGE
PROCESSING PESTICIDE
in increased investment and research; this is one of the CAPTURING
applications of robotic in the field of machinery design [1]. SPRAYER
Abilities of the agricultural vehicles can be categorized as
guidance, detection, action and mapping. The way of Figure 1: Basic Blocks of Pesticide sprayer Robot
navigation by the vehicle is termed as guidance, extraction of
environmental features is termed as detection and execution of

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 167 – No.3, June 2017

Pesticide sprayer can be used for the following purposes:

 The PIC 16F877A Controller is the Heart of the
STEP1: Identifying the defective and non defective leaves in
Robot.
plants.  The Driver Circuit is connected to the PIC
STEP2: Classifying the type of disease attacked in the leaves. Controller which in turn is connected to DC Motors
for the purpose of Driving the Robot.
STEP3: Pesticide spraying in defective areas.  The Pesticide Pump is used to transfer the pesticide
An automatic pesticide sprayer is involved to spray the from storage tank to the Sprayer head.
pesticide to the localized area of the affected crops. This
system is based on the sprayer that is filled with pesticide.
This provides a continuous flow of pesticide and an accuracy Part 3: Output part
that is not affected by varying fluid properties and flow 
conditions and also sprays pesticide on affected area of plant  The Direction Control unit controls the direction of
by adjusting the height of pesticide sprayer. This can be the robot.
controlled by using Team viewer software through mobile  The Spraying Unit Will sprays the pesticide in
specified direction.
remotely. The design is ideal for pesticide sprayer application .
 The spraying unit is adjusted up and down direction
3. BLOCK DIAGRAM according to plant height.
 Whole system can be operated remotely through
Mobile by using Team viewer.

MOBILE (Team
Figure 2 describes the detailed diagrammatic representation of
Viewer)
automatic pesticide sprayer. Input to the system will be the
IMAGE processed image; i.e. normal or defective leaf images, will be
given to the PIC microcontroller. The controller will process
the image and classify it as infected or normal leaf. If the
input image is a pest affected image, then the processor will
LAPTOP (Team CAMER provide access to the relay.
Viewer) A The relay will act as a switch and switch on the pumping
motor, which in turn spray the pesticide to the localized
MOTOR affected area in the infected leaves, automatically. If not, no
POWER PIC16F8778 action will be taken, the processor display it as normal image.
DRIVER
SUPPLY Microcontroller IC 293D An automatic pesticide sprayer is involved to spray the
pesticide to the localized area of the affected crops. The
design is ideal for pesticide sprayer application.

MOTOR DRIVER DC MOTOR DC MOTOR 4. SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM AND

IC 293D DESCRIPTION

UP &DOWN
DC MOTOR WHEELS
HIGHT OF
SPRAYER

PESTICIDE
SPRAYER

Figure 2: Block Diagram of pesticide sprayer Robot.

This system consists of three major parts:-
PART 1:- Input part
PART 2:- Spray and control processing unit
PART 3:- Output Part
Part 1: Input Part:-
 Input part consists of the power supply which Figure 3:- Circuit diagram for Pesticide sprayer Robot
provides power to each and We have used PIC 16F877A Controller. Basically crystal
 Every electronic component in the Robot. oscillator circuit is connected to clk in and clk out pins of the
 LAPTOP for MATLAB using GUI. microcontroller with two capacitors of 22pF. Then, it has
 Camera which provides input image for Leaf power supply unit which consists of bridge rectifier and filter
disease detection. circuit with capacitor, then by using fixed regulator IC7805,
continuous 5Vdc supply is provided to microcontroller.
Part 2: Spray and control processing unit. Basically this circuit consists of three DC Motors one is for

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 167 – No.3, June 2017

spray and another two motors are for robot. For driving these
motors we have used L293d motor driver which drives these
motors. Input pins of L293D drivers are connected to the
microcontroller. One motor driver can drive two motors.U4
drivers one DC motor which is connected at output pins
OUT1 and OUT2 of the driver IC.U3 drives two DC motors
which are connected at OUT1, OUT2 and OUT3 and OUT4
pins of the driver IC. Camera is connected to the PC.PC is
connected to the microcontroller through TX and RX pins.

4.1 Motor Driver IC Interfacing

Motor Driver IC like L293D or L298 is used for this purpose
which has two H-bridge drivers. Hence, each IC can drive two
motors. Motor driver does not amplify the current; it only acts
as a switch (An H bridge is nothing but 4 switches). Drivers
are enabled in pairs, with drivers 1 and 2 being enabled by the Figure 5:- Input image in RGB form.
Enable pin. When an enable input is high (logic 1 or +5V), the
associated drivers are enabled and their outputs are active and STEP 2:-
in phase with their inputs. When the enable pin is low, the In second step RGB image is converted into HSV image.HSV
output is neither high nor low (disconnected), irrespective of is named for 3 values: Hue, Saturation and Values. This color
the input. Direction of the motor is controlled by asserting space describes colors (hue or tint) in terms of shade
one of the inputs to motor to be high (logic 1) and the other to (saturation or amount of gray) and their brightness
be low (logic 0). To move the motor in opposite direction just value.Which represents in Figure 6.
interchange the logic applied to the two inputs of the motors.
Asserting both inputs to logic high or logic low will stop the
motor.

Figure 6:- HSV Image.

STEP 3:-
In step 3 HSV image converted into Hue image as shown in
Figure7.
Figure 4:- L293 D Driver IC

5. IMAGE PROCESSING
Image processing is processing of images using mathematical
operations by using any form of signal processing for which
the input is an image, a series of images, or a video, such as
a photograph or video frame. The basic unit of image is
pixels. The group of pixels will form an image. Here in
proposed system for processing an image we have used
MATLAB. An image is processed for disease detection in
below steps:
STEP 1:-
Firstly image has captured by camera is in the YCbCr form
then it is converted into RGB form which shows in Figure 5.

Figure 7:- Hue Image

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 167 – No.3, June 2017

STEP 4:- 2. Pre programmed GUI based navigation system.

Figure 8 shows hue image is converted into thresholding 3. Android interface to navigate the robot
image using MATLAB in which leaves has been segmented. 4. Fertilizer drill can be incorporate for cost effective
design.

8. CONCLUSION
The paper was aimed at not just to extend the application of
advanced technology in the field of agriculture, but also to
bring the technology close to the reach of farmers in financial
aspect, in a very convenient way. This paper provides an
engineering solution to diagnose diseased affected area of
plants by automatic sprayer robot remotely. An automatic
pesticide sprayer is involved to spray the pesticide to the
localized area of the affected crops. This system is based on
sprayer filled with pesticides. The Sprayer movement is
controlled by DC motor at low velocity, up & down direction
according to plant height. The proposed system can remotely
operate through any electronic device like mobile, laptop etc.
This is very essential in developing countries, especially
India, where agriculture is the backbone of the economy.

9. REFERENCES
Figure 8:-Leaves segmented [1] A.A.C.Fernando, and C.Ricardo, “Agricultural Robotics
STEP 5:- , Unmanned Robotic Service Units in Agricultural
In figure 9 resulted images are given in which segmented Tasks”,lEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, pp. 48-58,
leaves image converted into noise removed image for Sep 2013
removing another unwanted area then it is again filled with [2] C.Zhang, M. Geimer, O.N.Patrick, and L.Grandl, “
holes in filled image and when both images subtracted from Development of an Intelligent Master-Slave System
each other then diseased area is resulted with Calculated Between Agricultural Vehicles”, IEEE Intelligent
percentage of diseased area . Vehicles Symposium,pp. 250-255, San Diego, CA, US,
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[3] K.Uto, H. Seki, G. Saito, and Y. Kosugi, “
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A Practical Obstacle Detection System for Autonomous
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and Systems, (IROS), Vilamoura (Portugal),2012.
[5] A. Guillet, R. Lenain, and B. Thuilot, Off-road Path
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[6] F.G. Costa, J. Ueyama, T. Braun, G. Pessin, F.S. Osorio,
Figure 9: Resulted images. and P.A. Vargas, “ The Use of Unmanned Aerial
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6. MERITS Applications”, IEEE International Geoscience and
1. Improves the efficiency and Productivity of Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Minich, 2012.
Agriculture [7] Aishwarya.B.V, Archana.G, “Agriculture Robotic
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7. FUTURE SCOPE
1. Integrated GSM module which could control the
start/stop and run operation of the robot.

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