VIDEO: JUST as the farming community gets used to the idea of drones, here come the micro-drones.
Speaking at the 18th Precision Agriculture Symposium in Wagga Wagga, American ag tech expert Chad Colby of Colby AgTech said that within five years, crops could be scouted by swarms of micro-drones equipped with various sensors.
Micro-drones are palm-sized machines that either use a helicopter’s rotary wing, or mimic bird or insect flight.
One mini-helicopter, the Norwegian-developed Black Hornet Nano, has been used by the British military since 2013 to scout buildings and potentially hazardous ground.
The Nano has impressive specs for a machine about 10 centimetres long and weighing 16 grams. It has a range of about 800m, reaches a top speed of 35 km/h and stays aloft for 30 minutes.
A miniature camera relays video and still images back to a controller, who can fly the tiny machine through buildings and other hidden zones to check for threats.
Mr Colby asked someone involved in micro-drone production how long it might be before he could take a bucket of 50 affordable micro-drones equipped with different sensors into a field and usefully deploy them.
“About five years, maybe less,” was the response.
Considerable work is being done by robotics experts to develop algorithms that allow micro-drones to fly in swarms, each drone in contact with each other and with a central controller in ways that allow the machines to operate independently while acting as a system.
Tiny drones that mimic insect flight are also being developed.
Sooner than rather than later, farms might be buzzing with swarms of tiny machines capable of working at plant level, perhaps even beneath the canopy.
Matthew Cawood
National writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
National writer for Fairfax Agricultural Media.
