College of Engineering Unit:
The OSU Agricultural Drone team’s task is to design, build, and deliver a prototype agricultural drone to Raitong Organics Farm in Thailand for the purposes of spraying liquid fertilizer on fields of crops. The Ag Drone project is a multi-year project spanning several years of work, continuing until the project is completed and delivered. Bryan Hugil of Raitong Organics has asked Dr. Kendra Sharp and the Ag Drone team to deliver this drone to help his aging employee population keep up with the laborious tasks of farming crops such as rice and ginger. The drone will help alleviate some of the labor by replacing the need for carrying around heavy backpack sprayers over difficult terrain to spread the liquid fertilizer over all of the crops.
The drone must be easily deployable, have a flight time of 20 minutes, be able to carry a payload of 20 lb, and be easily maintained or repaired. The team’s focus this year is improving the work done by previous capstone teams and solving some of the problems they encountered. Some of these problems include: loaded flight time testing, extreme current draw issues, stability and reliability of the landing gear, and the spray nozzle disbursement quality.
