Recipient Organization
OGIVE TECHNOLOGY
43 PARKSIDE DR
DAVIS,CA 956161844
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Climate-smart and sustainable agriculture requires judicious, efficient use of energy-intensive inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. These biologically active inputs also present potential adverse environmental risks. Tightly targeted, precise application can achieve significant reductions in use rates and misapplication of agricultural chemicals. Rapid advancements in sensing, robotics and autonomous vehicles are facilitating precise targeting; yet these systems still rely upon, and are limited by, the existing, legacy-design spray nozzles and control systems. This project will directly address this limitation with an advanced nozzle and control system providing superior temporal and spatial resolution of precision dosing.This project will develop a dynamically-controllable nozzle system, with manipulation of the exit orifice and liquid pressure with rapid-response actuators of low cost, mass and power consumption. The nozzle system will provide greatly expanded 3-D dynamic control space (flow rate, droplet size and spray pattern/velocity) for precision dosing. The novel aspects are a) A deformable nozzle shape and actuator, allowing orifice shape deformations to alter spray formation; b) Integrated, individual nozzle pressure control; c) A low-power actuator and control system interface with mapped performance parameters; and d) A wireless network controller for integration into autonomous ground and aerial vehicles and conventional agricultural vehicles.The envisioned commercial product will address the unique needs of modern precision agriculture spray systems integral to autonomous aerial and ground vehicles while providing a new range of control to legacy agricultural vehicles and systems.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
40%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The primary goalof this project is todevelop a dynamically-controllable nozzle system, with manipulation of the exit orifice and liquid pressure with rapid-response actuators of low cost, mass and power consumption.The nozzle system will provide greatly expanded 3-D dynamic control space (flow rate, droplet size and spray pattern/velocity) for precision dosing.The novel aspects are a) A deformable nozzle shape and actuator, allowing orifice shape deformations to alter spray formation; b) Integrated, individual nozzle pressure control; c) A low-power actuator and control system interface with mapped performance parameters; and d) A wireless network controller for integration into autonomous ground and aerial vehicles and conventional agricultural vehicles.Toward the final goal, the immediate objectives are:1. Design a controllable, deformable exit nozzle shape that provides the means to manipulate the shape, pattern and atomization characteristics of the emitted spray sheet.2. Develop an actuation system for the controllable nozzle assembly, allowinglow-power, rapid manipulation of the orifice control.3. Experimentally determine and document the control envelope achieved with the actuator and nozzle manipulation system.4. Integrate the nozzle actuator and control system into a wireless communication network for autonomous and aerial spray vehicles,
Project Methods
A conventional engineering development and design approach will be used to design a pliable nozzle orifice exit, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to analyze flow dynamics of an elliptical orifice and the effects of altering the orifice shape on fluid flow and sheet emission. These results will guide the physical creation of testable prototypes using traditional subtractive mechanical fabrication and additive manufacturing processes (3-D printing and casting). These prototypes will be installed in test fixtures to allow pressure, flow and velocity measurements of the emitted spray and internal flow. Wind tunnel and static test stands will be used with laser-based and optical droplet sizing technology to evaluate the spray characteristics of the created spray cloud.