Agras line of drones
It’s no secret that drones are taking over more and more jobs on orchards and vineyards.
A lot of the early work for drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, was in the area of mapping vineyards or orchards for purposes of improving planting or irrigation.
Drones can use various sensing system to find potential frost pockets or problem areas for your irrigation system.
Now the UAVs are moving into active farming, with the Agras line of drones from market leader DJI.
The Chinese company is considered to be among the top three manufacturers of UAVs, and the DJI Phantom line is probably the most popular drone in the world for high-end aerial video recording.
The new Agras line of UAVs takes DJI’s skills in autonomous flight and applies it directly to agriculture.
The Agras can carry up to 10 kilograms of pesticide and very precisely spray a defined area of the farm.
The human operator simply programs the area to be sprayed, and how much spray should be used, and the Agras does the rest.
Once the area is defined, the Agras’ software will create a flying grid it follows to spray evenly over the entire crop.
And once the drone launches, it needs no further human intervention. For that reason, several drones could be deployed simultaneously.
DJI says their testing has shown spraying by drone can be done 40 to 60 times faster than spraying by humans on the ground. An area of 4,000 to 6,000 square metres can be covered in just 10 minutes.
One drawback is that battery life is only about 20 minutes, so efficient use of a single drone on larger properties would require multiple batteries.
The Agras MG-1 and MG-1S models are very similar, the main difference being an advanced radar system on the MG-1S that makes the flight path even more precise.
Both models are in widespread use in Asia today, and subsidiary companies have sprung up in China that offer drone spraying for farmers on a fee for service basis.
Find out more at: www.dji.com/mg-1s
