Seed Sowing or Tree Planting Drone

Published on 19 May 2022. Written by Dineshkumar E

Drones are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that finds its applications in various fields from delivering packages to surveillance, agriculture and many more. In this drone project, we are going to develop an autonomous seed sowing drone that can be used to plant trees in both agricultural fields and forest.

With the help of tree planting drones, you can plant a large number of trees quickly in less time. Seed sowing drones can be used for reforestation to plant a large number of trees that are destroyed due to forest fire or natural calamities.

Farmers and environmental agencies are facing difficulties in planting the trees or sowing seeds in the field. This seed sowing drone provides an effective solution to solve the problem by sowing seeds quickly with more accuracy. These drones are operated in a swarm to cover the large area in less time.

SLNOTE
Project Implementation

The drone is developed using hexacopter configuration as it needs to lift more payload and requires more flight time. Hexacopter configuration also provides more stability compared to the Quad.

This tree planting drone is equipped with a separate seed sower mechanism that throws seeds as per the requirements. Two types of seed sowing mechanisms are used: pneumatic and servo-controlled.

The pneumatic mechanism is mostly used for planting trees in the forest. Partially germinated seeds are placed in biodegradable pods along with nutrients and planted into the ground with the help of pneumatic powered launchers. This makes the pods to bury into the ground and hides it from the wild animals.

Servo controlled mechanism is used to plant seeds in agricultural fields. First, The container is designed and simulated in Solidworks and it is fabricated using lightweight materials to increase the efficiency.

Mission Planner is used to plan and execute the missions. The waypoints are planned as per the requirement to execute the missions. You can also control seed sowing speed, movement of the drone from one point to another, wait time for a particular point, etc.

The drone is equipped with sensors like Barometer, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS, Obstacle detection, etc. to execute the mission with more accuracy. Pixhawk 2.4.8 is used as the flight controller.

The seed sowing drone can also be operated in a swarm by connecting the drones to a common Ground Control station.

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Components used:

300KV brushless motor
50 Amps Electronic Speed controller
17x5.8 Carbon fibre propellers
Hexa X configuration carbon fibre frame
16000 mAh 6S Lithium Polymer battery
Pixhawk 2.4.8 flight controller
FPV camera with Video transmitter and receiver
GPS module
Obstacle avoidance sensor
Sonar sensor to detect the altitude
Seed sowing/tree planting mechanism
Long-range transmitter and receiver
Telemetry system (Ground and Air module) for communication between drone and GCS

The seed sowing drone can also be upgraded to hybrid by placing a generator system to achieve longer flight time. In this seed sowing drone project, we proposed a solution to minimize the manpower and cost spent on planting trees or seeds.

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Kit required to develop Seed Sowing or Tree Planting Drone:

Technologies you will learn by working on Seed Sowing or Tree Planting Drone:

Seed Sowing or Tree Planting Drone

Any Questions?

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