An eye in

the sky for

Agriculture:
The DRONE Revolution

By-
Bharti Yadav
2016AE19BIV
A powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a
human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to
provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be
piloted remotely, can be expendable or
recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal
payload

 Drones are the future of farming.

 “With greater refinements in drone technology and
implementation we will see the agricultural drone
sector take off.“-diydrones.com
 According to Global Markets Insights, Inc. the
Agriculture Drones Market will be valued at $1
billion by 2024.
 Successful Farming released the following statistics
from their 2016 Technology in Ag Study:

 9% of the ag industry already owns a drone

 3% of the ag industry will own a drone within the next 12 months
 17% of the ag industry will own a drone within the next one-to-two years
 33% of the ag industry will own a drone within two or more years
 38% of the ag industry doesn’t plan to purchase a drone
 49% of growers would hire a drone service
 36% of growers would purchase a drone on their own to use
 15% of growers would hire a drone service and purchase one on their own
 How Long do Drones Fly?
Average Flight Time
60

50
Time (Minutes)

40

30

20

10

0
Solo IRIS+ DJI Phantom 3 DJI Phantom 4 SenseFly eBee Sirius Pro
 .

Early Drone
Technology
History
Unmanned balloons filled
with explosives 1849
The earliest unmanned aerial vehicle in the
history of drones was seen in 1839, when
Austrian soldiers attacked the city of Venice
with unmanned balloons filled with explosives.

Wright Brothers First Flight

The Wright Brothers’ famous Kitty Hawk flight was in
the autumn of 1900, and only 16 years later Great
Britain developed the first pilotless winged aircraft: the
Ruston Proctor Aerial Target
 Modern History Of Commercial
Drones
 According to a Wall Street Journal report, the history of non-military drone use began in
earnest in 2006. Government agencies for disaster relief, border surveillance and wildfire
fighting, while corporations began using drones to inspect pipelines and spray pesticides on
farms.
 2006 was the first year that the FAA issued a commercial drone permit. They issued an
average of two of these permits a year for the next eight years – that was all that was
requested.
 Then, in 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that the company was considering using
drones as a delivery method, igniting the public’s interest in drone history. In 2015, the FAA
issued 1000 drone permits, a number which more than tripled to 3100 permits in 2016 and
which has continued to grow in the time since.
 SUB-SYSTEM OF UAV

UAV is a system consisting of different subsystems

 Unmanned aircraft (UA)
 Control system, such as Ground
 Control Station (GCS)
 Control link
 Other related support equipment.
 CLASSIFICATION OF UAVS
 UAVs are typically fallen into five functional categories:

• Target and decoy – providing ground and aerial gunnery a target that simulates an
enemy aircraft or missile

• Reconnaissance – providing battlefield intelligence

• Combat – providing attack capability for high-risk missions

• Logistics – specifically designed for cargo and logistics operation

• Civil and Commercial UAVs – specifically designed for civil and

 commercial applications
 Global drone market

 Global commercial drone market estimated at USD 552 million in 2014 and
expected to grow at rate of 16.9% over the forecast period (2014-2022).
 Advantages of UAV
 Very high spatial resolution (up to 1cm/px)
 3D modeling
 Not affected by cloud coverage
 High temporal resolution
 Technology
 Costs
 Innovations
 Applications
 Aerial assessments
 Data collection and analytics
 Mapping
 Early warning systems
 Disaster relief
 Environmental monitoring
 Delivery
Drone Applications in Agriculture
A widely-cited drone report released by the Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International predicts that the legalization of commercial
drones will create more than €70 billion in economic impact (such as
revenues, job creation) between 2015 and 2025, and that precision agriculture
will provide the biggest piece of that growth.
For now here are five drone agricultural applications already being
implemented in the field-
 Mid-Season Crop Health Monitoring
 Irrigation Equipment Monitoring
 Mid-Field Weed Identification
 Variable-Rate Fertility
 Cattle Herd Monitoring
 Mid-Season Crop Health
Monitoring
 The ability to inspect in-progress crops from about 100 meters height using
Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) or nearinfrared (NIR)
sensors is, thus far, the premier application for drones in farming.
 This was a task traditionally performed by often-reluctant college interns
walking into the fields with a notepad.
 Drones from the present generation, allow for coverage of more surface
area in a much shorter time stretch, as well as the capturing of data that
cannot be seen by the human eye (like the NDVI or near-infrared).
 Moreover, it removes much of the human error aspect of traditional
inventory work, though a physical inspection of an area of concern after
viewing the imagery is still recommended.
Irrigation Equipment Monitoring

 Managing multiple irrigation pivots is well...., it is laborious, especially for

large growers with many fields spread out across a county or region.
 Once crops like corn begin reaching certain heights, mid-season inspections
of the nozzles and sprinklers on irrigation equipment that deliver the much-
needed water really becomes a painstaking exercise.
 Mid-Field Weed Identification
 Using NDVI sensor data and post-flight image processing to create a weed
map, farmers and their agronomists can easily differentiate areas of high-
intensity weed proliferation from healthy crop areas growing right
alongside them.
 Historically, many farmers haven’t realized how pronounced their weed
problem is until harvesting was performed.
 Variable-Rate Fertility
 Though many will argue that ground-based inspections combined with
satellite imagery, along with a dedicated grid soil sampling program is
more practical for the purpose of refining Nitrogen, Phosphorus and
Potassium applications in agriculture, drones do have their fit.
 A drone service start-up company in the US has used NDVI maps to direct
in-season fertilizer applications on corn and other crops.
 By using drone-generated, variable-rate application (VRA) maps to
determine the strength of nutrient uptake within a single field, the farmer
can apply 300 kg/ha of fertilizer to struggling areas, 200 kg/ha to medium
quality areas, and 150 kg/ha to healthy areas, decreasing fertilizer costs and
increasing yield.
 Cattle Herd Monitoring
 Many growers during periods of depressed
commodity prices made the call to diversify
their farms by adding cattle or swine
operations. Drones are a solid option for
monitoring herds from overhead, tracking the
quantity and activity level of animals on one’s
fields. They are especially helpful for night-
time monitoring due to a human’s eye’s
inability to see in the dark.
 Agricultural Drones: What
Farmers Need to KnoW

 The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as they are sometimes called, are
rapidly becoming a core tool in a farmer’s precision equipment mix.
 Today’s farmers have to deal with increasingly complex concerns.
 Issues such as water – both quality and quantity, climate change,
glyphosate-resistant weeds, soil quality, uncertain commodity prices, and
increasing input prices to name a few.
 Growers are turning to high-tech tools, often under the banner of precision
agriculture, to respond to and mitigate these and other concerns
 Options for Collecting The “What’s
Happening Right Now” Data Layer
 Getting a sensor over a field: Fixed or Rotor
 Sensors
 Data Processing and Analysis
 Regulatory Considerations
 Insurance
 Return on Investment
Key Decisions for Farmers
 To consider seriously any tool that can boost productivity, mitigate input costs and ultimately,
improve the bottom line. Drones are still considered a new tool for agriculture, but their
demonstrated utility for assessing in-field crop health and their potential for compelling return
on investment make them an attractive addition to the precision toolkit.
 Whether farmers purchase and fly their own drone or hire a drone service provider to fly for
them, drones cost-effectively capture aerial imagery with accuracy and unrivaled immediacy.
When the window of opportunity for intervention is small, as it is in farming, ease of use and
fast turnaround of data is key. Waiting for manned aircraft or satellites to provide images after
a weather event or to monitor stand count is impractical for most..
 Obtaining understandable, actionable data in a timely fashion is essential.
 The key is to choose a software platform is easy to use and won’t require the user to monitor
processing.
 Agricultural drones are here to stay. Farmers that embrace the technology and integrate it into
their precision programs will wonder how they ever got along without it.