Blog

Jul 7, 2015

Agricultural use of drones begins to soar

The Associated Press is reporting that "Agricultural use of drones is about to take off in the U. S. after being grounded for years by the lack of federal guidelines"  

The small, relatively inexpensive vehicles could replace humans in a variety of ways: transmitting detailed information about crops to combines and sprayers, directing them to problem spots and cutting down on the amount of water and chemicals a farmer needs to use in those areas.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group, says agriculture could account for 80 per cent of all commercial drone use.

Drones can transmit data, which could be pictures, 3- D images of plants, thermal readings of crops or animals or other observations. Information that in the past took days to collect — or could not have been collected — can be gathered now in minutes or hours. In some cases, it can be integrated with data collected from other high- tech farm machinery.