Design and Implementation of a Cost-Effective Drone for Paddy Field Water Canal Inspection and Cleaning

Abstract

Drones’ technology has been evolved a lot in recent years. This technology also applied in various of sectors such as rescue, agriculture, and construction. This research projects explored drone applications in one of the most popular agriculture sectors in Malaysia, paddy field. The most important thing to agriculture is the water management system. If the water system faces a problem, then it affects most part of the plantations. To further increase the operation lifetime of the water management system, this project aims to develop a drone to provide monitoring capabilities to the farmer to monitor their water canal at paddy field. By selecting a reasonable part for this project, the drone cost was effective according to the performance. Equipped with the camera, the drone needs to connect to the smartphone hotspot connection and can display the camera output from the drone up to 10 meters. Various of tests has been done such as range test and flight test to implement the drone on the real situation in the industries.