TRACTOR-BASED REAL-TIME SYSTEM FOR DRIFT REDUCTION AND DISPOSITION PREDICTION

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: SMALL BUSINESS GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1010099
• Grant No.: 2016-33610-25693
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $599,869.00
• Proposal No.: 2016-03973
• Project Start Date: Sep 1, 2016
• Project End Date: Aug 31, 2019
• Grant Year: 2016
• Program Code: [8.13]- Plant Production and Protection-Engineering

Project Director
Teske, M. E.

Recipient Organization
CONTINUUM DYNAMICS INC
34 LEXINGTON AVE
TRENTON,NJ 08618

Performing Department
(N/A)

Non Technical Summary
This effort 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. Combining the accuracy of existing precision agriculture tools with the ability to directly predict, control, and log spray application and drift in real-time will dramatically impact crop production, crop protection, and worker/public safety in the United States. Verification and validation of the approach and its implementation and testing on a production sprayer will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.This research will satisfy four of the USDA strategic goals by developing of a more efficient and safer way to apply pesticides and herbicides. Strategic Goal 1 (assist rural communities to create prosperity so they are self-sustaining, repopulating, and economically thriving) will be addressed by enhancing crop yields and productivity, which will lead to improved farmer profits, exports, and availability of the finished products produced from the crops. Strategic Goal 2 (ensure our national forests and private working lands are conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change, while enhancing our water resources) will be addressed by enabling more efficient and safer methods for applying pesticides and herbicides to protect our forests and working lands from invasive or non-indigenous species (i.e. spruce budworm and gypsy moth). Moreover, by directly mitigating the drift of applied chemicals, drift related contamination of water resources and the environment will be reduced. Strategic Goals 3 (help America promote agricultural production and biotechnology exports as America works to increase food security), and 4 (ensure that all of America's children have access to safe, nutritious, and balanced meals) will be addressed in a similar manner to Strategic Goal 1 through enhancing yields and ultimately increasing US food exports and ensuring access to safe food.

Animal Health Component

80%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

0%

Applied

80%

Developmental

20%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
133	0199	2020	100%

Knowledge Area
133 - Pollution Prevention and Mitigation;

Subject Of Investigation
0199 - Soil and land, general;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering;

Keywords

drift control

drift reduction

environmental protection

ground spraying

real-time

tractor

Goals / Objectives
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

Project Methods
The effort will fully integrate the various software pieces developed in Phase I into a field-deployable model version, with the intention to use this operational, standalone code side-by-side with its mobile version to provide consistency and operability tests, specifically during the field study and more particularly when demonstrating the features of the model in a classroom or presentation setting. The PC version will also be useful in the testing and refinement of the model of the tractor/sprayer to be used in the field study, as well as serving as the platform upon which to verify accuracy.The real power of the technology will be in its ability to determine deposition and drift predictions when operating within the cab of a tractor/sprayer. This application will input sprayer position and weather data, to rapidly predict deposition patterns and drift potential. By tracking local trends in meteorological conditions, we will be able to match the desired width and level of the deposition pattern behind the tractor/sprayer. This matching will be accompanied by turning individual spray nozzles on/off near the spray boom ends or altering the spray boom delivery pressure. Of perhaps more importance is the real-time prediction of off-target drift and the ability to terminate spraying when a critical drift level is reached. In essence we intend to predict deposition/drift based on where we anticipate the sprayer will be in the future.A high-resolution model will be developed, tested, and verified. This model will then be brought to bear on the self-propelled sprayer to be used in the field study, generating a consistent computer model that will simulate the velocity and turbulence patterns expected when the full-scale tractor and sprayer are tested.Development of the portable application for a mobile device is deemed essential to exploit the real-time predictive capability of the software. The development process will be flexible enough to permit porting of the software application to a variety of mobile devices, and several development options will be explored to assure that proper throughput and display feature quality can be realized in the prototype unit.Changes in the predicted ground deposition pattern and estimated off-target drift potential of the released spray will eventually be used to establish criteria for warning the operator, with the possibility of recommending actions to correct the problem. Predicted spray deposition and drift metrics will be evaluated to understand their usefulness in providing guidance to the operator along with information required to log the spray and drift patterns.To demonstrate the ability of software to achieve its objectives, a field study will be undertaken to measure spray deposition and drift from a ground sprayer under typical meteorological spraying conditions, as a way of determining whether ground deposition patterns and spray drift can be accurately simulated in real-time on a tractor/sprayer.Field study results will be compared to model predictions, both real-time during the field study using onboard weather information and later when the externally measured meteorological data have been verified. Both the on-board system and the standalone model will be used to ensure consistency of model predictions and their comparison with the field data. We will also document lessons learned during and subsequent to the field study, thereby establishing requirements for the follow-on and production versions of the model.

Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The technology developed in this SBIR effort will directly reduce the cost and hazards of spray application, and thus improves crop production, by reducing wasted material, optimizing spray deposition, and reducing spray drift. The target audience for this technology is government agencies (USDA and EPA) involved in application regulation, individual farmers/applicators, cooperatives and agronomy service providers, and sprayer manufacturers. Changes/Problems:There was a no cost extension to enable us to schedule testing with the USDA ARS What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This SBIR Phase I/II effort developed a sprayer-based onboard software system for theprediction and prevention of undesirable spray drift during ground sprayer operations,successfully testing the operation of the system in a series of spray trials. These trialsdemonstrated that predicted deposition and drift agree well with measured data, with allpredictions being within the uncertainty of the measurements. The onboard system (designated AGSprayOPT) builds upon the approach and methodsemployed in the development, validation, and continued enhancement of the AGDISP software,undertaken for the last forty years by Continuum Dynamics, Inc. for the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration, the USDA Forest Service, the U. S. Environmental ProtectionAgency, and the industry-wide Spray Drift Task Force. AGDISP is used within the U. S.,Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and portions of South America as a regulatory tool for estimating spray drift and deposition from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and as a planningtool for these aerial application projects. AGSprayOPT is completely new and a more generaldrift and deposition prediction model, focused specifically on ground sprayer operation withtime-varying meteorology, spray path, and sprayer configuration. AGSprayOPT can beintegrated with ground-sprayer computer hardware to provide spray guidance and driftmitigation, through interfaces with GPS, terrain, and weather information. AGSprayOPT can logcurrent spray application, predict if and where drift will occur, warn the operator, and suggest oreffect changes in sprayer operation. Thus, the research presented here has the potential tosignificantly improve the safe application of agricultural pesticides and herbicides to crops, whilealso simultaneously reducing off-target drift and substantially reducing any potential forchemical exposure that such drift might bring to the agricultural environment and to personnelnear the ground sprayer operation.

Publications

• Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Teske, M.E. and G.R. Whitehouse, Tractor-Based Real-Time System for Drift Reduction and Dispersion Prediction, 2019, Continuum Dynamics, Inc., Report 19-10P: Ewing, NJ.