Tractor-based Real-time System For Drift Reduction and Disposition Prediction

This project addresses an opportunity to dramatically improve the efficacy and safely of applying pesticides and herbicides to crops, by developing a real-time, onboard sprayer control system that will predict spray drift and ground deposition as they occur, providing corrective measures to mitigate drift and improve application. The major goal of this project is to combine the accuracy of existing precision agriculture tools with the ability to directly predict, control, and log spray application and drift in real-time, dramatically impacting domestic crop production, crop protection, and worker/public safety. Verification and validation of the approach and its implementation and testing on a production sprayer will demonstrate the achievement of this goal and the effectiveness of the approach.The objectives for the program are:1. Refine the Phase I physics-based software2. Verify the accuracy of predictions against test data3. Implement the technology on a mobile hardware device
suitable for in-field operation4. Establish computational performance/accuracy tradeoffs and sensitivities5. Integrate technology on production sprayer hardware6. Undertake field-test of the technology deployed on a production sprayer