Study on smartly prescription generating and control for a variable-rate fertilizer applicator

In this paper, a smartly prescription generating and control ling method for a variable rate fertilizer applicator are developed. The application-specific prescriptions can downloaded into the applicator from the remote service center or they can also be set in the field according to the farmer experiences. The different methods for the prescription generation are proposed in detail. The route from a server with fixed Internet Protocol (IP) address to a GPRS terminal with dynamic IP address is discussed and built up, and the prescriptions is downloaded in this route. A high precision positioning method via a rough precision Global Position System (GPS) and encoder is introduced. A fertilizer application model in which the application prescription can be converted to the applicator actions is presented with Least Squares Techniques (LST) according to the experimental data. A control rule combining accuracy and energy saving is developed. The applicator has been tested in several farms.