Abstract

 

Effective crop treatment with maximum harvest preservation is one of the primary goals in agriculture. Today, two main types of treatment exist: ground-based (using heavy machinery) and aerial (light aviation). However, ground-based methods have significant limitations and drawbacks, such as mechanical crop damage and the inability to operate on wet soil or with tall crops. Most UAVs currently on the market use a semi-automatic control system. When GPS navigation becomes unstable or an off-nominal situation arises, the operator takes over manual control. This approach is economically inefficient due to labor costs and operator fatigue. During the project, the following problem was defined: a base and a field are located a set distance apart. Red-and-white pole markers are pre-positioned in the field. The UAV must fly from the base to the field along given parameters, complete a flyover along a specified trajectory, and return to the base. The project then examines the operating principles of each navigation system, along with their advantages and disadvantages. A software system was developed to determine the errors of inertial instruments, a software system for detecting ground markers, and a software system for constructing the field-flyover route. The developed integrated navigation program was tested against the given parameters. The test results showed that the automatic navigation and control system produces stable results even if one of the navigation systems fails. In the end, a stable, fault-tolerant, and cost-effective automatic UAV navigation and control system was developed, capable of performing the agricultural field treatment task.