Key Benefits of Drone Usage in Precision Agriculture

The growing population is resulting in increased global demand for commodities which is resulting in the industrialisation of farming for improved scalability. This is directly impacting the agriculture industry in being forced into modernising traditional farming methods. With these new challenges arise other opportunities. Emerging technologies in the form of UAVs. Drones are certainly not recent technology, however the usage and adoption of UAVs in farming and agriculture is on the rise.

We look at the key benefits of drone usage in Agriculture and highlight their application usage.
 

Increase in Work Efficiency and Productivity

Inspecting mid-season crops has to date required interns and other team members to scout the field capturing this data. Often resulting in human error from this traditional method.

The use of UAVs to scout in-progress crops has resulted in farm owners lowering production costs and decreasing the workload and man-hours previously required to complete this task.

The ALTI Transition, with an endurance of up to 11-hours, enables farmers to scout large fields by using high resolution infrared-sensors to determine crop health and report on Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) data.

Efficient Crop Management

Precision farming is changing the landscape for many farm owners, the usage of GPS satellite positioning systems, remote sensing, geo-mapping, variable rate technology (VRT), and others are helping to provide real-time, high-resolution data for smarter decisions.

The ALTI Transition payload bay, with a maximum weight of 1.5kg, can be tailored and hot-swapped to fit and mount a wide range of cameras, sensors and other equipment.

Improved Accuracy with Automation

The use of autonomous drones for creating topographic surveys has become common practise for gathering data. This is in favour over having to rely on costly aerial LiDAR or time consuming terrestrial surveys.
Autonomous farming is a near reality for many farmers and integrating UAVs with robotics will soon become a reality for many.