Precision Control of Spraying Quantity Based on Linear Active Disturbance Rejection Control Method

Abstract

Current methods to control the spraying quantity present several disadvantages, such as poor precision, a long adjustment time, and serious environmental pollution. In this paper, the flow control valve and the linear active disturbance controller (LADRC) were used to control the spraying quantity. Due to the disturbance characteristics in the spraying pipeline during the actual operation, the total disturbance was observed by a linear extended state observer (LESO). A 12 m commercial boom sprayer was used to carry out practical field operation tests after relevant intelligent transformation. The experimental results showed that the LADRC controller adopted in this paper can significantly suppress the disturbance in practical operation under three different operating speeds. Compared with the traditional proportional–integral–differential controller (PID) and an improved PID controller, the response speed of the proposed controller improved by approximately 3~5 s, and the steady-state error accuracy improved by approximately 2~9%.

Keywords

• precision agriculture
• spraying quantity control
• linear active disturbance rejection
• disturbance observer
• variable spraying control