Search results

Nowadays, food problems are likely to arise because of the increasing global population and decreasing arable land. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the yield of agricultural products. Pesticides can be used to improve agricultural land products. This study aims to make the spraying of cherry trees more effective and efficient with the designed artificial intelligence (AI)-based agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Two approaches have been adopted for the AI-based detection of cherry trees: In approach 1, YOLOv5, YOLOv7 and YOLOv8 models are trained with 70, 100 and 150 epochs. In Approach 2, a new method is proposed to improve the performance metrics obtained in Approach 1. Gaussian, wavelet transform (WT) and Histogram Equalization (HE) preprocessing techniques were applied to the generated data set in Approach 2. The best-performing models in Approach 1 and Approach 2 were used in the real-time test application with the developed agricultural UAV.

In Approach 1, the best F1 score was 98% in 100 epochs with the YOLOv5s model. In Approach 2, the best F1 score and mAP values were obtained as 98.6% and 98.9% in 150 epochs, with the YOLOv5m model with an improvement of 0.6% in the F1 score. In real-time tests, the AI-based spraying drone system detected and sprayed cherry trees with an accuracy of 66% in Approach 1 and 77% in Approach 2. It was revealed that the use of pesticides could be reduced by 53% and the energy consumption of the spraying system by 47%.

An original data set was created by designing an agricultural drone to detect and spray cherry trees using AI. YOLOv5, YOLOv7 and YOLOv8 models were used to detect and classify cherry trees. The results of the performance metrics of the models are compared. In Approach 2, a method including HE, Gaussian and WT is proposed, and the performance metrics are improved. The effect of the proposed method in a real-time experimental application is thoroughly analyzed.

This work was performed within IMI Spray Mould, an EPSRC joint funded programme, aimed at developing a manufacturing route for large aerospace composite forming tooling, based on metal spray technologies. Assesses the mechanical properties of Invar steel coatings, deposited using electric arc spraying, and correlates these properties to the spray parameters and processes used so as to offer coatings with characteristics appropriate to the tooling requirements. In particular, two processing methods, inert and air atomisation, and three arc spray gun configurations (air cap design) are evaluated. The mechanical properties of the coatings are found to be low compared to bulk Invar, regardless of the spray parameters and hardware used. Inert arc spraying affords more consistent coating characteristics but this comes with a compromised durability. The spray hardware is found to be more significant in determining the coating properties than the parameters employed.

Quotations for the protection of substantial tonnages of widely different types of steelwork were obtained from eight companies, geographically distributed throughout England and Wales. All the companies had substantial facilities for blasting and for applying either paint or sprayed metal coatings.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a paint deposition pattern model applied to robotic air spray painting in order to achieve the accuracy and uniformity of paint film thickness on free‐form surface.

The paper opts for an exploratory study using the curvature circle method for air spray painting on free‐form surface to construct a spray gun model. First, a paint deposition pattern model of ellipse dual‐β distribution is fitted on the basic of experimental data from robotic air spray painting. Second, a spray gun model is proposed using the curvature circle method for air spray painting on free‐form surface. The theoretical result is coincident with the film thickness in verification experiment spraying a cylinder surface. The biggest error of the sample points between the theoretical and experimental results is less than 4 μm, thereby the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed model is validated.

The paper provides a specific theoretical and methodological support for the realization of process planning and simulation system in surface spray manufacturing. It will make the future developed system meet the actual processing requirement. At the same time, it is more representative.

The paper finds an approach to solve paint deposition pattern model suitable to free‐form surface. The present method can be applied to the complex reality of topological relation for actual workpiece surface to be painted.

The purpose of this paper is to design a special automatic redundant robot painting system (RRPS), which can automatically navigate and paint in the long non-regular duct.

The RRPS is designed with three subsystems: a redundant robot, a spraying system and a control and safety system. Based on the modular design theory, the robot falls naturally into a mobile platform, a 4-DOF location mechanism and a 10-DOF manipulator. The restriction of the distance between the links and the duct axis is used to plan the trajectory of the manipulator so that it would not collide with the duct. The restriction model is constructed by minimizing the sum of the weighed distances between the duct axis and the special points.

A fully working prototype system has been developed. Test results show that the minimal distance between the robot joints and duct is 18 mm, and it can finish painting long non-regular ducts at the speed of 12.5 cm/s and the spraying distance of 16 cm. The quality of coating layers is good.

The RRPS was used to paint non-regular rectangular ducts, cylindrical ducts and long non-regular ducts. The feasibility of painting long non-regular duct is proved with the prototype implementation and successful test results.

The RRPS shows a novel solution that is based on the 14-DOF redundant robot design for painting long non-regular ducts which is used in airplane.

Nowadays, the global agricultural system is highly dependent on the widespread use of synthetic pesticides to control diseases, weeds and insects. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is deployed as a major part of integrated pest management in a precision agriculture system for accurately and cost-effectively distributing pesticides to resist crop diseases and insect pests.

With multimodal sensor fusion applying adaptive cubature Kalman filter, the position and velocity are enhanced for the correction and accuracy. A dynamic movement primitive is combined with the Gaussian mixture model to obtain numerous trajectories through the teaching of a demonstration. Further, to enhance the trajectory tracking accuracy under an uncertain environment of the spraying, a novel model reference adaptive sliding mode control approach is proposed for motion control.

Experimental studies have been carried out to test the ability of the proposed interface for the pesticides in the crop fields. The effectiveness of the proposed interface has been demonstrated by the experimental results.

To solve the path planning problem of a complex unstructured environment, a human-robot skills transfer interface is introduced for the UAV that is instructed to follow a trajectory demonstrated by a human teacher.

Geigy Co. Ltd. Stand 75. Diversified application of benzotriazole as a corrosion inhibitor specifically for copper and its alloys is the main theme of Geigy's stand.

The purpose of this paper is to propose cold spraying and laser cladding processes as alternatives to cadmium and chromium electroplating, respectively. There are many substances or chemicals within the coating technology that can be identified as substances of very high concern because of their carcinogenic or mutagenic nature. Cadmium and chromium undoubtedly belong to these items and are the basic constituents of electrolytic coating processes. Finding an alternative and adapting to the existing restrictions of the usage of such hazardous products stands for many to be or not to be in the market.

The research work was focused on down selecting the appropriate materials, producing the coating samples, testing their properties and optimizing process parameters by statistical method. On the one hand, the high-pressure cold spray system and spraying of the titanium coating on the landing gear component, and on the other hand, the high-energy laser cladding facility and the wear resistant cobalt-based coating deposited onto the shock absorber piston. Substrates of these two applications were made of the same material, 4330 – high-strength low-carbon steel.

Meeting the requirements of Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals implies undertaking research and implementation work to identify alternative processes. The work provides the technical characteristics of new coatings justifying application readiness of the researched processes.

Taguchi’s design of experiment method was combined with the measurements and analysis of specified coating properties for the optimization of the cold spray process parameters. There is also laser cladding process development presented as a fast rate technology generating coatings with the unique properties.

The problem with spraying two pack solventless epoxy is to mix the two components in the correct ratio so that effective curing takes place when the material is sprayed.