Agricultural Application using Autonomous UAS

Interest in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for civilian use has increased greatly in recent years and is expected to grow significantly in the future. This paper describes work performed in a NASA-sponsored effort to develop and demonstrate the capability for a UAS used for agricultural spraying to make autonomous real-time decisions based on sensor data of the aircraft state and prevailing wind conditions. An intelligent controller was developed and demonstrated that can autonomously direct efficient agricultural chemical application of a UAS aircraft. The controller is able to provide good application uniformity while minimizing spray drift for given wind conditions by utilizing predictions obtained with Continuum Dynamics, Inc. (CDI) AGDISP (AGricultural DISPersal) software enhanced with a free wake model from the CDI CHARM (Comprehensive Hierarchical Aeromechanics Rotorcraft Model) software. The effort demonstrated the ability to perform the required onboard sensing and communication to allow inflight decision-making and execute a pre-determined flight path/spraying strategy autonomously using a UAS.