Research Shows Drones Could Help Crop Management Take Off

[DooKey]

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, could help farmers determine if their crop is growing satisfactorily, according to a recent study conducted by University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture researchers. This isn't something that surprises me at all. It makes perfect sense to use cheap drones to study how your fields are doing and use that information to improve yields and make more money.

Of the two camera systems analyzed, the images produced from the multi-spectral camera proved to be more accurate in estimating plant populations, with a greater than 93 percent accuracy. However, researchers say the red, green, blue (RGB) images produced by the less-expensive digital camera still looked promising, with a greater than 85 percent accuracy using current methods and scripted programming.

 

[dgingeri]

I remember when I was a kid, my sisters and I stayed with an aunt and uncle who ran a small farm. We learned a lot about farming that week, but this reminded me of how my uncle told us that he needed to do his "Friday walk through". He walked all the way around the corn field, and then back and forth through the field about every 10 rows or so, then did the same for the vegetable field. It took him about 6 hours. He told us he was looking for trouble signs and to make note of what he needed to do for the next week. It was also his "calm time" when he could get away from the house for a bit. (They had 4 daughters.) That sounds like what these drones would do. God forbid it takes that kind of calming time away from the farmers.

 

[Rahh]

I remember when I was a kid, my sisters and I stayed with an aunt and uncle who ran a small farm. We learned a lot about farming that week, but this reminded me of how my uncle told us that he needed to do his "Friday walk through". He walked all the way around the corn field, and then back and forth through the field about every 10 rows or so, then did the same for the vegetable field. It took him about 6 hours. He told us he was looking for trouble signs and to make note of what he needed to do for the next week. It was also his "calm time" when he could get away from the house for a bit. (They had 4 daughters.) That sounds like what these drones would do. God forbid it takes that kind of calming time away from the farmers.

Golf, Fishing, and etc.. There are other things I'm sure he'd love to do with that time but may not have as much excuse to get away then. ha!

 

[steakman1971]

Agriculture has been using drones for a few years now. I met with a cattle farm several years ago that were going to use drones (and maybe NFC or BlueTooth - don't remember) to fly over cows and automatically inventory/scan their ear tags. I wasn't going to be involved on the hardware side - we were going to develop and app that got the data collected by the drone. We didn't get the contract so don't know much else about it.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Father in law uses drones to see different parts of his field to keep a random eye on things. Because if there's one thing that's common, is that uneducated, unskilled laborers will steal anything and everything they can if they think they can get away with it. And I don't mean stealing food to feed their family, I mean cleaning an acre or more at a time and getting the whole fucking family in on it too, down to the little kids.