A Tasmanian leader in the use of drones in agriculture says the next leap forward will be virtual reality technology.
Bothwell grazier and mixed farmer Will Bignell runs DroneAg with Aerial Vision Australia’s Kyle Gardner.
And while Mr Bignell said much of the agricultural drone work currently revolved around refining GPS technology, once twinned with virtual reality systems, the opportunities were enormous.
Virtual reality technology would allow layering of data, which would be particularly helpful in opening up new ground.
“If it’s land you have never cropped, there are wheel ruts, and drainage areas you can focus on,” he said.
“It reduces that work load in winter and a lot of guys who have got us in have bought new farms, which they don’t know intimately.”
“We are right on the cusp, as virtual reality technology gets a bit more affordable, and as it comes into the Iphone style space, that will really take off, for us.”
He said he became involved with drones, after an earlier interest in radio controlled model planes.
“As GPS technology became more affordable, we were in the right place, at the right time – we focussed on building products, rather than building drones,” Mr Bignell said.
“The drone, to us, is just a platform to gather data.”
DroneAg, a CASA approved operator of unmanned aircraft, specialised in precision agriculture.
“Our aircraft can fly a variety of sensors which can be used to help assists farmers and agricultural consultants in improving or aiding their farm management decisions in a timely and cost effective manner,” a company spokesman said.
“Our unique ability to design and build from the ground up aircraft which harmoniously match the needs and economic pressures of modern precision farming and the quality of data collected by the drones is one of our core strengths.”
Mr Bignell said there were currently five pilots working for DroneAg, flying five to six machines, including a plan with a four metre wingspan with a four hour flight time.
Initially, drones were being used in cropping “train” modelling and drainage work.
“Over two days, we can do a 1000 odd hectare farm with a vertical accuracy of five to six centimetres, and left and right, on the ground, of about three centimetres,” Mr Bignell said.
Ground mapping might show a gate was five metres away from where actually was, he said.
“We are really focussed on getting that pulled together – and out of that we can do drainage modelling, drainage planning, pivot plans and farm safety stuff.”
Drones were helping bring insurance premiums down, in the wine industry, as they could assist with accurate slope gradient maps.
“When they induct drivers of grape bins, they can say ‘you don’t go up here with a loaded bin,’ – they show them the map, it sits in the tractor, and there, the insurance premium is brought down, because one of the biggest things is vehicle tip-overs, on steep slopes.
“That sort of stuff is something we never saw coming.”
Drones had also been used in trials of weed mapping, in the Coal River.
But Mr Bignell said crop vigour mapping had not taken off as much as he would have expected.
“I work with a company in Canada – we are both Colonials so we get on alright -we have a good old chat, globally, and are on the same page.”
Mr Bignell said crop vigour mapping showed great potential.
“Poppies can be worth sixty cents to a dollar per square metre, and to bring the drone in and map per metre, cost to 10-20 cents,” he said.
And according to the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research report one large segment of the agricultural robot market would be drones.
The agricultural drone market had the potential to generate an additional 100,000 jobs in the U.S. and $82 billion in economic activity between 2015 and 2025, according to the report.
But BofA Merrill Lynch anticipates that drones will see even more liftoff in the agriculture industry, predicting that 80% of the commercial market for drones will eventually be dedicated to agriculture.
The report indicates that robots in the next 10 years could become the main workhorses powering farms, instead of people.
Thermal imaging camera maker FLIR recently launched a camera specifically for drones that is intended to show farmers differences between healthy and distressed crops.
The data collected can show farmers where to add or reduce water or pesticides, or help farmers determine when to harvest.
“People in the U.S. and EU no longer want to work on farms due to factors such as low farm incomes, its lack of reliability and seasonal nature, and its demanding and risky nature,” the report states.
“Today, less than 1% of the U.S. population claims farming as an occupation – with the average number of U.S. farmworkers having declined from 3.4 million last century to 1 million today.”
