Platform for the management and coverage path planning optimization for unmanned release of biological pest control agents

• Grant number: 22/15486-5
• Support Opportunities: BIOTA-FAPESP Program - PIPE
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: February 29, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agricultural Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Antonio de Oliveira Machado
• Grantee: Ricardo Antonio de Oliveira Machado
• Company: SPITFIRE MULTIMIDIA SS LTDA ME
• CNAE: Atividades de apoio à agricultura ; Atividades de apoio à produção florestal
• City: São Paulo

Abstract

Agricultural pests and diseases can cause financial losses in the millions per year and threaten food security. Biological Control (BC) is a natural phenomenon to mitigate a certain pest population, making it less abundant and harmful. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as a BC support platform is promising due to the low operating cost, high efficiency and wide range of application. BirdView is a company from São Paulo, located in the city of São Manuel, specialized in the application with UAV of biodefensives for pest BC since 2015. The company has proprietary technology, licensed in Brazil, South Africa, India and Mexico, which allows the release of natural enemies at any stage of their life cycle, providing sustainable pest control. In addition to this technology, BirdView, in partnership with Embrapa Instrumentação, São Carlos, has developed a Route Optimizer for unmanned aerial application of biological agents (ORBIO), to manage biodefensive dispersion missions and provide route automation with UAVs. This planning is necessary to meet the restrictions involved in the BC operation, such as: identification of the main characteristics of the coverage area, search for adequate landing and takeoff points, determination of the distance between the parallel lines of the trajectory considering the type of agent application in use, definition of the flight altitude, safe return to the base considering the vehicle's energy limitation and generation of files containing waypoints ready to fly. ORBIO originated from the market gap related to optimized route planning software, multiplatform and easy to use by its users, aimed at BC. Existing software on the market does not have route optimization based on user-configured parameters and requires greater operator experience in generating flight plans. Initial experiments with ORBIO showed promise, as there was a reduction in planning time compared to plans generated manually by an experienced professional. In addition, there was a reduction in the average human error of 18%, which thanks to automation, can be radically reduced to less than 1% in the distances between the lines required for the BC. In this context, this project aims to expand the scope of the ORBIO project, dealing with large-scale planting areas through the planning and management of multiple flights in each mission. The challenge is to use adequate decomposition techniques, according to the coverage area, to divide the area into subareas according to the UAV flight capacity and the mission characteristics. In this context, the multiple subareas resulting from the decomposition can be covered by a single UAV, performing several consecutive flights and interspersed by battery changes at the base or by multiple UAVs, requiring more sophisticated strategies of cooperation between them in order to avoid falls and collisions. At the end of the project, it is expected to make available on the market a complete route management and optimization platform aimed at the BC with UAV, capable of dealing with small or large extensions of land. (AU)