Rapid advancement in pesticide application includes robotics, autonomous vehicles, and unmanned aircraft; yet, these systems still rely upon and are limited by existing, legacy spray nozzles

The goal of the project is a controllable nozzle, with deformations of the exit orifice providing control of the spray flow, pattern, droplet size and motion. The nozzle materials and properties will be designed to allow simple actuation by piezo-active elements, providing low-cost, low power consumption, rapid response, and low mass. Piezo-electric actuators for human interface haptics (e.g., mobile phone keyboard feedback) have high durability, long life and low cost. The performance goals of the nozzle system are a greatly expanded 3-d control space (flow rate, droplet size and spray pattern and velocity), a ten-fold reduction in actuator mass and power requirements and ten-fold increase in response time. The novel aspects are: a) a deformable nozzle shape, with heterogeneous material properties, allowing orifice shape deformations to alter spray formation; b) low mass, low power piezoelectric actuators; c) nozzle design to translate linear actuation to curvilinear alterations in the orifice shape; d) actuators to allow spray aiming; and, e) integration into industry standard pressure and PWM control systems to achieve defined spray characteristics such as flow rate, droplet size, spray velocity and spray pattern. The final system will address the unique needs of modern precision agriculture spray systems such as precision, target-sensing weed sprayers and unmanned aircraft; yet, IT will also be compatible with and provide new capabilities for conventional AG sprayers.