Agricultural Drone: Designing for further afield
As Oregon State University’s Agricultural Drone team, we are partnering with Raitong Organics Farm to bring engineering beyond the class room to farms and fields.
A Project with a Purpose
Our goal for this project is to improve accessibility of UAVs for agricultural use in low income countries. To this end, we are pursuing a drone which is open source, rugged, and designed for easy repair. The result of this is improved efficiency in agriculture at a lower cost to the user than conventional farming practices.
Landmarks:
Flight time of 30 minutes to 1 hour
Cover 100 square meters with consistent spraying
Areas of optimization:
Minimization of custom parts
Maximization of off-the-shelf part use
Repair simplification
Build time
Where can volunteers contribute?
Manufacturing
Our team will be manufacturing a variety of materials ranging from carbon fiber to sheet metal. Each part is unique and offers different challenges which will help grow volunteers' experience and manufacturing abilities. Our experienced manufacturing team will use a variety of tools from the CNCs and waterjet to the mills and lathes.
Design
We are looking to create a frame and payload system that is compact, modular and lightweight. Volunteers are welcome to assist in modeling, frame loading analysis, and prototyping.
Testing
We flight test the drone regularly and appreciate assistance in designing static and dynamic testing methods to improve our designs.
Come on over
Agricultural Drone meets at Rogers 342 Monday 1pm
Please contact Cole Rawie at rawiec@oregonstate.edu