Terminal Sliding Mode-Based Trajectory Tracking of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Agricultural Spraying

Abstract

Improving agricultural productivity is a growing challenge to cover the world’s food needs. Precision agriculture is about improving agricultural resources using new and smart technologies. In this framework, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as assistive robots are proven to be highly responsive tools in a wide range of applications, such as farms monitoring, disease treatment and crop spraying. In this paper, a Terminal Sliding Mode Control (TSMC) strategy is proposed for flight trajectories tracking that are planned for different agricultural-inspired spraying scenarios. The proposed agricultural spraying path planning and tracking further improves the process performance in terms of accuracy and autonomy. Simulation results and discussions demonstrate the effectiveness of the TSMC-based crop spraying approach in terms of fastness, precision and robustness of system responses. Findings contribute to improving the efficiency of UAV-assisted spraying systems in the precision agriculture.