An Aeronavics drone surveys the farm below. This could become a much more common sight soon.
An Aeronavics drone surveys the farm below. This could become a much more common sight soon.
Drones are set to become the "eye in the sky" on New Zealand farms.
John Bampfylde, CEO of DroneMate, a Kiwi firm specialising in the commercial application of drone technology, says the uptick in interest has been noticeable over the past few months.
"Previously, three or four years ago, you would buy a drone and it generally had reliability issues," Mr Bampfylde says. "Now they are cheaper, better, and they're just more reliable ... people are beginning to think: 'Okay, well how can I actually use this on the farm?'"
Where farmers previously had to travel across the breadth of their farm in a truck or on a quad bike to identify crop levels, now they can cover multiple hectares through a drone camera without moving an inch.
Not only does this save time, it eliminates soil disturbance - and farmers can at the same time gather intelligence on water levels, fences, gates, animal health, and more.
Specialised cameras are often attached to the drones and mapping applications are used to develop sophisticated 2D and 3D maps.
"We can even mount specialised camera systems that measure photosynthesis to give crop farmers - particularly fruit tree farmers - an early heads-up to any signs of disease," says Jonathan Kubiak, sales consultant at Ferntech, a drone retailer.
"They can also use them to herd stock. Sheep, deer and cattle all respond just the same as they would with bikes and dogs."
While Ferntech has just opened an Auckland store for DJI products - the world's largest drone producer - other Kiwi firms are capitalising on the growing market with more specialist products.
Aeronavics is producing industrial UAVs with a range of agricultural capabilities. One example is its soon-to-be released precision spray drone, which significantly reduces costs.
According to Aeronavics, one of New Zealand's largest agricultural spraying companies is looking at using this technology to reduce risk to pilots, having lost an employee in an agricultural plane crash recently.
Aeronavics director Linda Bulk shows off one of her company's drones.
Aeronavics is also envisaging a future in which drones can perform tasks on a more automated basis, without the need for real-time monitoring by the farmer.
Rob Brouwer, director of flight operations, says the future looks like this: "A smaller drone that lives in a doghouse-sized automated hangar, launches on command to scan the terrain and gathers data from various sensors, and creates a map of nutrient deficient zones, pests and weeds.
"This data is sent to a larger drone in the form of a mission map, which deploys to target those areas with a precise dose to eradicate the pests or fertilise the soil."
And the technology has significant environmental upside: "This is a smart and precise way to reduce the volumes of unnecessary chemicals delivered into our nation's soils and waterways, and to maximise efficiencies, by reducing runoff."
DroneMate has built a relationship with Sentera, one of the world's leading specialist sensor manufacturers. By pairing the sensors with various DJI models, the company has developed an accessible and affordable way for farmers to take their first steps with the technology.
The drone and its sensors monitor Near Infra Red light, the level of which is correlated with the healthiness of plants. This data is then converted into a plant health index and placed onto a map, allowing farmers to visualise which sections are doing well and which need attention.
Next frontier
The next frontier is on the data analysis side, and Bampfylde says that careful analysis gathered by sensor companies over the past 18 months in which agricultural drone uptake has skyrocketed is starting to show up some interesting new capabilities.
"I think the next stage is we're going to see a lot more, and much smarter, interrogation and analysis from the data that the drones are now gathering," says Bampfylde.
This will eventually mean that more can be measured from the same footage - such as moisture levels - than is now possible.
However, according to a Global Market Insights Report, there are still hurdles to overcome.
Although drones allow precision monitoring, most farmers don't yet have precision agriculture technology to act on that information, such as the ability to spray extra fertiliser on a particular four square metres identified by the drone.
Aeronavics' precision spray drone may well provide the solution to this particular hurdle.
Additionally, centralising data from increasingly smart farms is a challenge. Farmers are now collecting data from multiple sources, but it is being fed into vastly different computer programmes that are often unable to speak to each other.
And the common limitation identified by those with a stake in the industry is regulatory in nature. Drone operators must maintain line of sight to their drone at all times.
This means despite the ability to operate multiple kilometres from the controller, farmers are permitted to fly their drone only a relatively short distance from where they launch it.
Aeronavics' futuristic vision of drones taking off by themselves based on automated systems is a potential solution to this hurdle.
"The actual hurdle for large scale adoption, in our opinion, is because of limitations in the regulatory framework and in particular the requirement to keep the aircraft within visual line of sight," says founding director Linda Bulk.
By having the drones take off automatically from multiple launch points, the farmer doesn't have to travel across the farm to launch and operate the drone.
In the future, a farmer could be waking up and checking the state of the farm, before even getting out of bed.
