Smartphones for the assesment of sustentable spraying process

Abstract

In Argentina, as well as in other agro-industrial countries, specialists are adopting new technologies for the efficient agrochemicals management. This process is aimed at optimizing costs and reducing environmental impact. Currently, different types of computational tools are used, from geo-referenced historical production maps to weather applications. In the case of spraying, it is essential that the producer can have real-time analysis tools in the same place, at the time of performing an application and thus be able to make decisions immediately, always considering the environmental impact. One of the most used tools in the evaluation of the quality of the spray is from the use of water-sensitive cards, which show with a reasonable degree of confidence the calibration state of the pulverizing machines. In this work the use of cell phones is proposed, to help in the process of calibration the spraying machines. For this purpose, the reading process of hydrosensitive cards is automated by means of computer vision technique. These devices allow the producer to immediately verify how a lot has been worked and recalibrate the machinery if necessary. The process followed and some robustness tests of this computational tool are presented.