Keywords: Drones , robotics , agriculture
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and other robotic vehicles are no longer seen as toys for hobbyists. They are becoming an important tools for the future of agriculture. However many people still have questions about the safety of drones, about how farmers use UAV on their farms, and what kinds of regulations exist in order to use these new technologies.
Dennis Bowman is a University of Illinois Extension educator and expert in agricultural technologies, including drones. He explains that there is much interest from agriculturalists in UAV technology. Because it is the opportunity to see a “bigger picture” of what’s going on in their fields. Although crop scouts may be able to see problems while walking through acres of corn early in the season. It becomes more difficult to detect problems across the field later in the season.
“When the corn is up over your head, it’s hard to see what’s going on throughout the entire field. The opportunity is to get this picture from the air, to be able to see what’s going on at the far end of a 120-acre field that’s not easily visible from the road, you can do a better job of seeing all the things that might be going on,” he says.
He adds that drone technology is already allowing farmers to see areas of the field. It can show problems such as nitrogen deficiencies, weed problems and the extent of the problems, and impacts of drainage issues in a field. “ All of these are in these aerial images. Documenting things that happen during the year, a historical perspective of the crop development throughout the season, we can add to the data set.
“There’s a lot of interest in this technology.”
Girish Chowdhary is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at U of I and expert in field-robotics and unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Recently, Bowman along with Girish Chowdhary shared some of the advances and limitations of robotic vehicles in agriculture during a one-hour live Twitter chat and podcast.
Chowdhary explains that UAV is also called drones. It refers to aircraft that does not have a person inside, and is flown by an operator using a remote control, or an aircraft that glides or floats. UAS, however, refers to the combination of the aircraft, a communication interface, the operator, and any other support system that helps the unmanned aircraft can do something useful. “UAS made popular during early 2000s, but UAV have been used for a long time,” Chowdhary says. “UAS have become more feasible and more practical in the early 2000s. Because computers became smaller and more powerful.”
Chowdhary says the next frontier of UAV and UAS technology is ground robots and drones. They will work together to tackle problems in fields such as weeding, fertilizing, or sampling the plants.
“The real game changer will be when drones start working with autonomous ground equipment. Autonomous ground equipment refers to small robots that can go under the canopy,” he says. “Drones are really useful when the canopy closes. Because you can’t walk on that canopy. Unfortunately, a lot of problems, by the time they’re visible in the canopy it is often too late. Ground robots are small enough to drive between the rows and go under the canopy. So that they can provide a different perspective on what’s going. And also they can potentially work in tandem with the drones to more quickly find the problems and their causes.”
