Customized Design and Preliminary Testing of a Precision Spraying Drone for Vineyard Applications

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for spraying plant protection products are an emerging technology aimed at enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of agricultural production. This paper presents the design and development of an innovative UAS-based spraying system for targeted and precise spraying applications in vineyards. The proposed solution introduces several innovations compared to state-of-the-art technologies. Nozzle positioning is optimized through Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations and wind tunnel tests to improve the control of sprayed droplets. The system reduces the sloshing effect, i.e. the oscillation of the onboard liquid, through a tank with internal baffles and with the adoption of a sloshing-aware control strategy. Precision spraying is further enhanced by a methodology for vineyard row tracking and following. Although the system is under development, this article outlines the architecture, the design methodology, and presents some preliminary results. A first prototype has been successfully developed and preliminarily tested, demonstrating the feasibility of the project and validating some of the key design concepts, while further developments are ongoing to implement all system functionalities.