V O L U M E 4 N O. 2 | m ay 2 0 1 4
Robotic
Agriculture Market
emerges
Inside This Issue: Automating Chicken Coops Fast Facts on Unmanned Ag Interview With ‘The Unmanned Farmer’
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V O L U M E 4 N O. 2 | M aY 2 0 1 4
CONTENTS 10
6 Essential Components
The Latest in Precision Agriculture
8
Fast Facts What You Need to Know About Unmanned Farming
14
State of the Art A Look at Where Automated Farming is Sprouting Up
Strong Growth Unmanned Ground Vehicles Primed for Ag Market
18 Q & A
USDA Takes Aim at UAS Research
20 Overview
A Look at the Diseases That Affect Crops
22 Uncanny Valley
UAS Ag Insurance Market Blossoms
17 Technology Gap
26 Testing, Testing
The Sky is the Limitation
On the Cover: Rowbot System’s Rowbot makes its way through a cornfield. The robot can monitor plants in need of expensive nitrogen fertilizer. Photo courtesy of Carnegie Robotics and RowBot Systems LLC. Page 10.
Crop Surveying Via UAS
31
End Users
“The Unmanned Farmer,” Robert Blair Forecasts Farming’s Future
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MIssion Critical Contacts Michael Toscano President & CEO mtoscano@auvsi.org Gretchen West Executive Vice President gwest@auvsi.org Brett Davis Vice President of Communications and Publications, Editor bdavis@auvsi.org
23 Watching Grass Grow
UAS Await Impending Ag Market
Danielle Lucey Managing Editor dlucey@auvsi.org
Mike Greeson Senior Business Development Manager mgreeson@auvsi.org Ken Burris Sales Manager kburris@auvsi.org Dave Donahoe Sales Manager ddonahoe@auvsi.org Wes Morrison Sales Coordinator wmorrison@auvsi.org
Contributing Authors Karen Aho, a freelance writer in western Massachusetts, reports and writes on science, business and housing. She can be reached at k.aho@msn.com. Lee Ewing is the former editor of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report and Homeland Security magazine and is a frequent contributor to Mission Critical. Gaea L. Honeycutt is chief creative officer at Brazen Maven Marketing Communications and is a freelance writer. Zach Rosenberg is a freelance journalist in Washington, D.C.
Index of Advertisers Entira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fischer Connectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Integrated Microwave Technologies, Inc. (IMT) . . . . . . . . . 32 iRobot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Front Cover Proxy Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 RoboBusiness Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
28
Spotlight Georgia Tech Robots Fly the Coop
Mission Critical is published four times a year as an official publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the authors and do not necessarily express the policies or opinion of the publisher, editor, AUVSI or any entity of the U.S. government. Materials may not be reproduced without written permission. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents. Annual subscription and back issue/ reprint requests may be addressed to AUVSI.
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Mission Critical
Editor’s Message
The Fruits of Our Laborers Farming is the second most dangerous profession in the world.
Danielle Lucey Managing Editor
‘
Farmers will need to produce more food to keep up in the next 50 years than they’ve produced in the last 10,000 years combined.
’
I learned that statistic earlier this year when I attended the AUVSI Atlanta Chapter’s annual symposium on unmanned systems in agriculture. The event was full of eye-opening revelations, like how by 2050 the world’s population will swell by more than 2.5 billion more people and how farmers will need to produce more food to keep up in the next 50 years than they’ve produced in the last 10,000 years combined. To keep pace, agriculture will need to innovate, much like the Industrial Revolution and invention of the assembly line forever changed factory work, enabling production rates never before imagined. At AUVSI, we know that this major change will come from the unmanned systems industry. As an organization, we’ve spent a lot of time in the last few months reaching out to the agriculture community, attending trade shows and making that industry aware that they are likely the next huge market boom for unmanned systems. AUVSI’s “Economic Impact of UAS Integration in the United States” report, released last year, pegged agriculture as the top economic opportunity of the impending $13.6 billion UAS industry. And unmanned ground vehicles will also add to that number, tilling fields and watering plants with more precision and accuracy than any other technology currently available. Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta has vowed that the agency will finally release its small UAS rule before the year’s end, meaning that the mostly 55-pound-and-under unmanned aircraft that will be used in agriculture could be on U.S. farms a year from now. This issue of Mission Critical explores that market sector’s endless potential. Contributors Zach Rosenberg and Lee Ewing look at how unmanned air and ground vehicles will spot diseases quicker, apply pesticides more economically and precisely plant different types of seeds in soil specially optimized for that crop. Those stories are on Pages 10 and 23. In our Spotlight, on Page 28, writer Karen Aho explores the Georgia Tech program that seeks to add robots to chicken farming. And on Page 31, writer Gaea Honeycutt talks to “The Unmanned Farmer” Robert Blair, who was an early adopter of using UAS on his farm. He navigates the line between farmers and mainstream UAS operators and discusses how the systems can best be adopted. You can also read a Q&A on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Aerial Application Technology Program and the demand for an unmanned agriculture insurance market, among other hot topics.
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Robot Sorts 2 Tons of Grapes in 12 Minutes Napa Valley’s Hall Winery has started using an automated grape sorter to work through its yield, separating good grapes from those that are not up to snuff at a lightning pace. “Sort grapes for five minutes and you’re dizzy. Imagine the mental drift after eight hours. I did it for years — brutal,” Steve Leveque, head winemaker at the vineyard, told Modern Farmer. Now, Leveque feeds 200 grapes into the machine every morning. The sorter digitally photographs them and then starts sorting, pushing through and shooting at 10,000 frames per second. “Most wineries can sort about two tons an hour, using 15 human sorters,” says Leveque. This robot does the same in 12 minutes. Not only that, but in blind taste tests, Leveque says the machine produces higher quality wine. Scan this QR code with your smartphone to see Hall Winery’s grape sorter in action.
Blue River Technology Raises $10M for Robotic Farming Mountain View, Calif., company Blue River Technology announced in March that it raised $10 million in funding from Data Collective Venture Capital, Innovation Endeavors and Khosla Ventures. The company is focused on commercializing robotic systems that can be used in agriculture, building on a company concept that “every plant counts.” “Blue River has taken huge strides towards reinventing food production in a world of growing populations and scarce resources,” says Jorge Heraud, cofounder and CEO of Blue River Technology. “With our new funding, we’re looking to hire passionate engineers and scientists to help us advance the boundaries of computer vision, machine learning, robotics and agriculture in order to solve real-world problems.”
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HoneyComb and OSU Use UAS to Prevent Stressed Crops
HoneyComb’s UAS can pinpoint stressed crops. Photo courtesy HoneyComb Corp.
HoneyComb Corp. is developing an unmanned aerial system with Oregon State University, funded by Oregon BEST and the Portland Development Commission, which pinpoints where crops are stressed so that farmers can respond efficiently. The UAS can be used for precision agriculture and forestry applications. By determining where the stressed crops are, the system can potentially save farmers irrigation, fertilizer and labor costs so that they can respond locally and reduce input costs, decrease runoff and boost yields. For forest use, the UAS can determine tree counts, stand density and areas of pest infestation or disease, which allows growers to estimate timber value more efficiently from the air before doing labor on grounds. The $150,000 grant from Oregon BEST also supports collecting data and analysis by sending technicians into the field to gather data so that can be compared to the remote data collected by the aerial system through photography. “Rather than someone walking a 1,000acre field looking for areas of crop stress, our system can survey that acreage in an hour and analyze the data so a farmer can see where the issues are and hone in on those areas,” says Ryan Jenson, CEO and one of the three cofounders of the company. “Part of the Oregon BEST funding is allowing us to correlate and validate this data, so we have third-party verification of the efficacy of our information.” The HoneyComb system measures reflectance in the visible and near-infrared spectrum, which can be used to calculate the Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index, an indicator of crop stress. Healthy plants show up as green, whereas highly stressed plants are red. This allows growers, farm consultants or service providers to respond more efficiently to problem areas. The UAS can’t determine what’s wrong with the plants, just that they are under stress, which could be because of lack of water or fertilizer. However, the funding enables thermal imaging technology, which specifies moisture levels in plants and shows what the plant needs to eliminate stress. “We’re pleased to be partnering with the PDC to help this Oregon startup compete in an arena where Oregon’s rich history of agricultural and forestry research intersect with our strengths in high technology innovation,” says David Kenney, president and executive director of Oregon BEST. “Precision agriculture will dramatically improve the efficiency of global food production, and this partnership will help position Oregon as a leader in this emerging sector.” Michael Wing, assistant professor of Geomatics in the OSU College of Forestry and director of OSU’s Aerial Information Systems Laboratory, is overseeing the OSU side of the project. “The project is funding a graduate student who is very good at biometrics and geomatics and will provide the field verification to make HoneyComb’s product a turn-key solution,” Wing says. “Farmers won’t have to worry about analyzing the data, because they will get it all georeferenced and mapped so it’s immediately useful to them.”
Essential components
SenseFly Releases New Ag UAS In April, Swiss UAS manufacturer senseFly released its eBee Ag, an unmanned aerial system aimed at the agriculture market. “The detail provided by [the eBee Ag’s] customized cameras and its software’s index calculations allow customers to analyze crop conditions remotely and in high detail,” says Jean-Christophe Zufferey, CEO of senseFly. “This means less time wasted on manual checks and less reliance on low-resolution satellite images or costly airplane shots. “ Customers can choose from a range of camera options for different applications, according to a company press release. The system comes with a cus-
tomized Canon S110 NIR, but it can be switched out with an S110 RE, an S110 RGB or an Airinov multiSPEC 4C. The fully autonomous system comes with two software packages, the eMotion 2, for flight planning control, and the Postflight Terra 3D, a three-centimeteraccuracy photogrammetry software used for images processing and analysis after the flight. “With the accurate and timely data the eBee Ag supplies, farmers can optimize their crop management and chemical usage, saving them time, saving them money and helping them boost their yields,” says Zufferey.
Scientist Develops UAS to Study Forests Texas A&M research scientist Dr. Sorin Popescu is working with a team to develop an octocopter to study forests. Popescu plans to use the octocopter as a watchdog to map floods and fires in real-time, allowing people and aircraft to monitor the situation from a distance. It can also be used to collect data on biomass and carbon and how trees respond to climate change. “The goals we want to accomplish with this system are multiple but all related to studying forests, forest health and forest three-dimensional structure,” he says. “The UAV allows us to collect data in a highly customized way, unlike other airborne systems we had to hire out.” The unmanned aerial system is comprised of the octocopter, camera stabilization platform and the autopilot. The cameras are multispectral, and the system is also outfitted with laser scanners. The autopilot and scanners make it possible to type in specific GPS coordinates and have it fly to the location. A gimbal was also added that has a threepoint axis, which lets the scientists to take vertical aerial photos to help with getting three-dimensional information. “Using software on the computer, we can do flight planning depending on what camera we have on it and its focal length. We can establish a flight height, and it will actually calculate, based on how much overlap we want, where it needs to fly and where it needs to hold to take a picture, so we can get stereo photos,” says Ryan Sheridan, a doctoral student on Popescu’s team.
Dr. Popescu and doctoral student Ryan Sheridan are equipping an octocopter for forestry projects. Photo courtesy Kay Ledbetter, Texas A&M AgriLife Research.
Popescu explains that the biggest challenge he is facing is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to establish the regulations for flying UAVs. Although Texas A&M University Corpus Christi is one of six federally approved test sites for research on safe use of unmanned aerial technology, Popescu is still unsure whether the FAA will allow him to use the octocopter. “We need to be at low flying altitudes, but we’re not sure if flying it needs permission, and that process can be complicated,” Popescu says. The octocopter is a three-year project that is being funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA.
New Zealand Farmer Uses Drone for Sheep Farm A Chinese-made Hexacopter helps a New Zealand farmer keep track of sheep on his Otama Valley farm after a documentary about the military use of drones in Afghanistan got him thinking about how to incorporate the technology for his work. Neil Gardyne needed an easier approach to assess the sheep on his extensive farmland. “We lose a percentage of cast sheep on our hills every year, and it takes us two hours on a quad to get around all of our land, some of which isn’t easy to access,” says Gardyne in an interview with Farmers Weekly. He also wanted to improve safety standards at the farm. “In New Zealand, eight people are killed on quad bikes every year and more than 800 others are injured. So we were keen to find a tool that improved safety while at the same time reduced expense. This was where the drone fitted in,” Gardyne says. Gardyne imported the $4,000 Hexacopter from the United States. He’s using it for checking leakages in water troughs, counting sheep and observing weeds. He also has plans to measure grass dry matter with the UAS using a specific application that is he is developing with scientists. “We plan on creating a base figure by plate metering 10 percent of the farm. We will then feed this into a system and, once we have the base figure, the drone will be able to tell us whether we are trending up or down. From this we can then make a proactive decision for stock management so we can maximize first-quality grass and quantity,” Gardyne says. Gardyne estimates 5 percent savings of costs on the farm and 45 percent on travel time. The use of the quad bike has dropped by nearly half since the UAS started work. The Hexacopter can be operated manually within a range of 1.9 miles or flown independently with unlimited coverage and a flying time of 20 minutes. It is powered by rechargeable lithium batteries and carries two cameras. Gardyne is working with the Civil Aviation Authority in New Zealand to pass regulations for the aircraft. Mission Critical
7
in
Agriculture safety:
A growing Agricultural Problem
Crop dusters have the
3 rd highest
fatality rate
NEED:
among professions in the U.S.
75 years
The world will require
7 0%
or older
grew by 20%
more food production by 2050
The
AGE: The number of farm operators
since 2002
Solution
better analyze crops better identify signs of stress Efficiently dispense water and pesticides address aging farmer population maximize yields
UAS in agriculture have the potential to be a $3 billion market in just the first three years after the FAA opens commercial airspace. Over the next decade, this number will rise to almost $30 billion.
$ 66
$11
billion economic impact
FAA opens commercial airspace
over 3 years
billion economic impact
over 10 years
fast facts
Cost-effective and Accessible UAS will make precision agriculture more cost-effective and accessible than ever before. Research already confirms its enormous benefits to farmers.
In 2011, farmers in Japan used more than 2,300 unmanned helicopters to perform 90 percent of the nation’s aerial crop spraying.
Unmanned systems in precision agriculture could
save farmers significant time and resources
by providing a cost-effective way to • Monitor overall crop performance • Observe soil patterns • Detect stresses such as blight and drought • Spray for pests and diseases
$17 to $54
Potential
per acre: increased net returns from precision nitrogen management
15%
increase of crop yield
40%
reduction in fertilizer usage
Precision Agriculture
Other Markets
80%
20%
The precision agriculture industry is expected to be the largest sector for UAS, comprising aproximately 80 percent of the known potential commercial markets for unmanned aircraft.
Rowbot Systems’ Rowbot, which can precisely deliver nitrogen fertilizer in cornfields. Photo courtesy Carnegie and Rowbot Systems.
Strong Growth Predicted for Ground Robots Designed for Agriculture By Lee Ewing
The agricultural robot market will grow from $817 million in 2013 to $16.3 billion by 2020, with ground robots accounting for the vast majority of that growth, a new study predicts. “Worldwide markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the agricultural robots are used in 10
Mission Critical
every aspect of farming, milking, food production and animal control to implement automated process for the industry,” according to WinterGreen Research, publisher of the 28 Jan., 2014 study, “Agricultural Robots Market Shares, Strategy and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2014 to 2020.”
The growth estimate “is really not a very big number when you consider how big the total agricultural market is,” says Susan Eustis, WinterGreen’s president, CEO and the principal author of the study. “This is where the growth is going to come. It’s not in the military.” While some unmanned aerial systems are being used for agriculture now and many others are awaiting regulatory approval to fly commercially, “It’s mostly ground robots,” she says. Eustis does not attribute the disparity between air and ground robot markets to regulatory restrictions. “I think the regulatory situation will be resolved, she says. “I don’t think the courts are going to let that stand.” Instead, it’s the relative usefulness of the two modes of robots in agriculture that accounts for the predicted disproportionate growth of ground systems, Eustis says.
“Imagine being able to automate end-to-end every part of the agricultural process. I think it’s just a huge opportunity.” For farmers, the increasing availability of robots that can do a job faster and with fewer workers than conventional methods is critically important now that there are acute shortages of migrant workers. While the WinterGreen Research study encompasses industrial robots used to produce agricultural equipment as well as field robots, the International Federation of Robotics produces separate reports on industrial robots and service robots, which include field robots used in agriculture. “Turning to the projections for the period 2013-2016, sales forecast indicate an increase to about 94,800 units with a value of U.S. $17.1 billion,” says the latest IFR report on service robots, “World Robotics Service Robots 2013.” “Thereof, about 28,000 robots for defense applications will be sold in the period 2013-2016. They are followed by milking robots with about 24,500 units. This is probably a rather conservative estimate. These two service robot groups make up 55 percent of the total forecast of service robots at the current time.” The two studies agree that the market for agricultural robots, chiefly ground robots, is vast and growing. They also show that the range of applications of agricultural field robots is so broad that it touches virtually every element of farming, including cattle milking, planting, fertilizing, controlling weeds, monitoring and harvesting crops, and organizing them for distribution. While some agricultural robots are self-propelled, with varying de-
grees of autonomy, many are pulled by tractors, manned or unmanned. For certain applications, an operator in a manned tractor may control an unmanned tractor as they work the fields together. The main goals of all these robots are the same: increase crop yield and save money, resulting in higher profits. Various robots help make that possible by reducing the cost of manpower, seeds and fertilizer. They also can reduce the need for pesticides, limiting environmental damage while maintaining plant quality. Rowbot and Planter Rowbot, an articulated two-footby-seven-foot diesel-powered robot narrow enough to operate between corn rows 30 inches apart, is intended to reduce the need for expensive nitrogen fertilizer by applying it precisely. Currently, as much as half of all the nitrogen fertilizer applied is lost in the air or water, causing pollution. Rowbot Systems LLC, which has tested prototypes in several states, plans to offer farmers a service in which a fleet of 20 Rowbots, rolling between corn rows, quickly, efficiently and precisely applies fertilizer only where it is needed. The goal is to enable the robots to operate autonomously for hours at a time, says John Bares, president and CEO of Carnegie Robotics LLC, which develops technology for the Rowbot. Farmers growing corn, soybeans or wheat also could benefit from a new electric robotic planter from Kinze Manufacturing, Beck Hybrids and Raven Industries, which enables them to plant in a single pass through a field two varieties of hybrid seeds that are optimized for different soils. For example, farmers could plant a “racehorse” seed in highly pro-
ductive soil and a less expensive “workhorse” seed in soil likely to be less productive. The Kinze Electric Multi-Hybrid Concept Planter is being tested on farms in the Midwest this spring, says Rhett Schildroth, senior product manager at Kinze Manufacturing. Currently the planter is pulled behind a manned tractor. An electric drive precisely plants the right hybrid seed for the soil it is passing over. Eventually, the system could be autonomous, he says. Meanwhile, Kinze and software partner Jaybridge Robotics are continuing field testing and development of the Kinze Autonomous Grain Harvesting System introduced in 2011. The system was field tested in 2012 and was refined for 2013. “Right now, we’re leasing the system to farmers” in a controlled rollout, Schildroth says, adding that Kinze plans to put it on sale in two to five years. The system uses an autonomous grain cart which follows a manned harvester, offloads grain automatically, drives to a large tractor-trailer, offloads the grain and returns to its position behind the harvester to get another load. The system’s low manpower requirement, Schildroth says, enables farmers to expand their cultivated fields considerably without hiring more workers and to save on fuel as they adapt their workflows for greater efficiency. Thinning Lettuce Lettuce is the top vegetable crop in California, but growing it has been costly, especially because planting seeds with sufficient space to grow and eliminating unwanted plants is labor intensive. At least two companies are offering robotic lettuce thinners designed to address the problem. Mission Critical
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Kinze Manufacturing’s Autonomous Grain Harvesting System. Photo courtesy Kinze Manufacturing.
Blue River Technology, founded in 2011, used computer vision and robotics to develop a precision lettuce thinner known as Lettuce Bot in 2012. Last year, Blue River launched a commercial lettuce thinning service that can handle 40- to 42-inch beds and said that a version that can service beds twice that width should be available this year. The company announced 19 March that it has received $10 million in new funding, which Jorge Heraud, Blue River’s president and CEO, says will be used to hire more people and expand its product offering. Plans include refining the lettuce trimmer, extending plant recognition and big data capabilities to corn and soybeans, rapid fieldbased phenotyping for crop breeders, and precise weed control for lower chemical intensity. Vision Robotics Corp. offers an automatic lettuce thinner that uses cameras to identify each lettuce seedling and then sprays unwanted plants to kill them, using fertilizer or other chemicals. The lettuce thinner is the first application of Vision Robotics’ Intelligent Sprayer Technology, which the company says can be adapted to thin other 12
Mission Critical
crops and used for selective weeding. Vision Robotics also is applying its vision-based technology to robot grapevine pruners and robots for detecting and harvesting tree fruits such as oranges and apples. Farmers, who already make extensive use of computer technology, are receptive to agricultural robots, whether they purchase them or contract for services that use them, Carnegie Robotics’ John Bares has found. Providing agricultural robots as a service, rather than through outright sales, is likely initially, he says. “Early on, I think you’ll to see more adoption through the service model [by] huge farms. Later you’ll see adoption by the smaller farms.” While technological barriers are falling quickly, Bares says, further improvements are needed, such as “very robust sensors,” multimodal sensors, more affordable and more precise GPS systems, and lower cost human interfaces, such as computers, laptops, radios and smartphones. Challenges in growth of agricultural robotics, Bares says, include coping with the widely variable weather conditions in the fields,
including a wind, rain and hail. “I think it’s surmountable, but it definitely is a challenge.” As for the future of agricultural robots, he sees two trends developing. One is a shift from massive farm equipment, which is being used to reduce the need for operators. For example, he says, decades ago farmers might cultivate four to six rows of corn at a time, but today’s giant machinery allows a single operator to cover 24 rows. “I think one of the big opportunities is that machines over the last 20 or 30 years have gotten larger and larger and larger, to reduce labor,” Bares says. “I think there may be a trend now to go the other way,” to hold down labor cost by using a fleet of smaller machines controlled by one operator. “The other trend that I think we’re already seeing is applying robotics to … specialty [agriculture]. Everything from shaking a tree to harvest almonds to picking oranges to spraying herbicides and pesticides.” Robotics is especially useful in specialty agriculture, where every crop is different. “I think you’re going to see a lot more automation early,” Bares says.
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Robotic Farming Sprouts Up Mission Critical takes a look at where the action is around the globe when it comes to automated farming.
Leola, S.D. Edmonton, Canada Advance Aeronautics Research Systems, formerly of Pakistan, has developed a hand-launched UAS called Agro UAV to monitor and gather data from the field and then land in the same area from where it launched.
Mack Robotics Inc. created the BinBot to make grain bin operations safer. It can push, pull or lift the grain sweep and knock down a wall of grain, a dangerous job formerly done by people.
Carlton, Ore. A shearing robot called Wall-YeFrance was recently demonstrated in a vineyard pruning application. The robot’s inventor, Christophe Millot, says he’s sold 30 of the robots to winemakers in France.
Blacksburg, Va.
Stead, Nev. Desert Research Institute has built 25 remotely operated generators that burn a solution of silver iodide, sodium iodide, salt and acetone to release microscopic silver iodide particles, which can create additional ice crystals, then snow, in winter clouds to supply water to northern and southern Nevada. This is known as cloud seeding.
Virginia Tech is using UAS to research Fusarium, a group of fungi that includes devastating pathogens of plants and animals, which shows how these microbes travel through the air. Researchers now believe that with improvements on this preliminary research, there will be a better understanding about crop security, disease spread and climate change.
West Lafayette, Ind. Baton Rouge, La. Louisiana State University’s AgCenter is currently using UAS in tests with the American Sugar Cane League to see how the crops tolerate colder weather.
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Mission Critical
The National AgrAbility Project leverages innovative equipment, like its hands-free SmartDrive Wheelchair Power Assist, which allows people with spinal cord injuries to drive a combine.
State of the art Minneapolis University of Minnesota researchers are using UAS to study aphid infestation in crops. The recorded images will provide the data needed to determine if they can accurately identify stressed crops.
Rowbot Systems LLC created the Rowbot, an unmanned ground system that optimizes nitrogen use by precisely applying fertilizer. They’re meant to run 24 hours a day for seven days a week.
Carlow, Ireland Agricultural research center Teagasc Moorepark is testing using robots to milk cows in the field, instead of first herding them into a milking facility. The system uses GPS to locate the animals and performs an average of 1.8 milkings per cow each day in a field of seven bovines.
Mingenew, Australia Darrin Lee of the Mingenew Irwin Group became the first farmer in Australia to adopt UAS technology for his cropping program, using the systems as a tool to reveal the real-time nutrient status of crops, weeds and insect populations.
Sydney The University of Sydney has introduced a new robot called Rover that rounds up cows. A human remotely controls it; however, a future version may be fully automated.
Madrid The Universidad PolitĂŠcnica de Madrid has created the Rosphere, a rolling ball designed to move over farmland, navigating uneven terrain using GPS and Wi-Fi technology. The device can measure soil composition, temperature, and plant health and transmit that information back to the farmer.
Gore, New Zealand The biennial Southern Field Days farming event held in February 2014 hosted the country’s first live robotic milking display, using Lely Astronaut A4 milkers. Partners of the demonstration included Cowhouse Construction and Technipharm.
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U P C O M I N G P R O G R A M S
UNDERSTANDING ITAR AND EAR COMPLIANCE IN THE UNMANNED SYSTEMS INDUSTRY WHEN: 28 May 2014, 1500-1600 EDT (U.S. and Canada) SPEAKERS: Eric McClafferty, Robert Slack and Michael Dobson, Kelley Drye & Warren
Exports of unmanned systems are becoming increasingly important to companies’ bottom lines. Unfortunately, a labyrinth of U.S. export control rules and licensing requirements apply to exports of many unmanned systems, from small commercial UAS to large military systems. Learn how to untangle this complex web during AUVSI’s May webinar with export control attorneys from Kelley Drye & Warren. The webinar will walk through the various rules that apply to unmanned systems (including important aspects of the ITAR and the “dual-use” EAR) and suggest some practical solutions to tackling export control issues facing the industry.
RESERVE YOUR SPOT IN AUVSI’S MAY WEBINAR TODAY AUVSI MEMBERS: FREE
NONMEMBERS: $39
For registration and sponsorship information visit www.auvsi.org/webinar
AUVSI
WEBINAR
technology gap
The Sky is the Limitation One Step Forward With Test Sites, Two Back With SUAS Rule Delays
Wide open land has always been key for agriculture, but with unmanned aircraft soon coming to the fore, open skies will be essential as well. A stepping stone on the path to open skies for unmanned aircraft, the North Dakota Department of Commerce and the Federal Aviation Administration announced in late April that the very first UAS test site that’s a part of the congressionally mandated integration plan for unmanned aircraft became operational. This facility is a stronghold for agriculture research, explains Al Palmer, director of the UAS Center for Excellence for the University of North Dakota, in an interview with Mission Critical that occurred prior to the announcement. “It’s a low-hanging fruit here in North Dakota,” he said. “We’re located in Red River Valley, which is an old prehistory lake bed. Other than Nile Valley, this is probably some of the most fertile ground in the world, we grow a lot of crops here — from sugar beets, potatoes, corn, small grains — and it seems like agriculture is going to be a natural application for unmanned aircraft.” The test site, formally called the Northern Plains Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site, will start its agriculture tests in early May and will remain operational for two years. “We anticipate our first research project under the test site is going to be … with the Corn Council,” says Palmer. “The University of North Dakota is already doing research with unmanned aircraft
systems, so we’re leveraging that.” The mission, which will operate out of North Dakota State University’s Carrington Research Extension Center in Carrington, N.D., will look to see if unmanned aircraft could make a farmer more productive and decrease some of his efforts, says Palmer. It will use UAS to examine crop color and tell the healthiness of the plant. The test site will also operate flights out of Sullys Hill National Game Preserve near Devils Lake, N.D., about an hour north of the Carrington site. Research later this summer will focus on using unmanned aircraft to detect the health of animals. “We have one application over at Devils Lake where there’s the UAS that can take a look at cows and pigs and monitor the temperatures of those animals,” says Palmer. “Just like humans, when we get sick the first thing that happens is we have an increase in temperature. … Animals have the same thing. If a rancher could sense that the animal is getting sick, then he could quarantine that animal before it infected the rest of the herd.” Rulemaking Stagnation The FAA this year plans to release a ruling that could expedite the use of small unmanned aircraft, so they would be able to fly commercial missions, like the ones being proven out in North Dakota. But that process has been marred by missed deadlines — the January update of significant rulemaking by the
North Dakota test site officials announce that they are one of six sites to be selected by the FAA. Photo courtesy the University of North Dakota.
Department of Transportation lists the small UAS notice of proposed rulemaking deadline as November 2014, which is nearly four years after it was initially promised. Until this occurs, small UAS can only take to the skies for noncommercial uses by obtaining a certificate of authorization from the FAA. “It sometimes takes longer than any of us would like, and that’s certainly the case with me,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, speaking at a March Washington, D.C., event. He would not comment on exactly when the longdelayed regulations would come out, only limiting that it would be before the end of the calendar year. In March, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the Academy of Model Aeronautics and 31 other organizations sent a letter to the FAA, denouncing the delayed small UAS rulemaking process. Mission Critical
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USDA takes aim at uas research The U.S. Department of Agriculture is developing an unmanned aircraft component of its Aerial Application Technology Research, a program that aims to implement new aerial technologies for sustainable crop production and protection. Agricultural engineers Dr. Wesley “Clint” Hoffmann, Dr. Yubin Lan and Dr. Chenghai Yang answered questions about the agency’s approach to using this new agriculture technology. Q: Why did the USDA decide to start the unmanned aspect of its Aerial Application Technology Research program? A: Our USDA-ARS-Aerial Application Technology Research Unit acquired two UAV helicopters in 2008 as part of an outside funded project, which required a completely autonomous UAV spray application platform. Both UAVs had technical issues related to secure and reliable communications and autonomous functionality, uploading spray missions to the onboard software, and overall equipment reliability. Ultimately, both UAVs were permanently grounded, putting our UAV efforts on the backburner due to safety and reliability issues. Budgetary constraints over the past few years have also severely limited our UAV research. Q: What types of unmanned aircraft are you using for your research? Did the team have any prior experience using the systems? A: Prior to the acquisition of the two UAVs in 2008, none of our group had any experience. At this time, this was not seen as an issue, as the two UAVs we purchased were designed such that no formal UAV piloting experience was needed. Rather, operation was to be performed via a simple GUI [graphical user interface], which 18
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automated takeoffs, landings and allowed for direct input of mission flight plans. As of now, our unit currently retains the two grounded helicopter-type UAVs and one new hexacopter. The helicopters are still being evaluated to determine whether or not they can be repurposed or if new ones need to be acquired. Q: What kind of training did the team do on the unmanned aircraft you used? A: As mentioned in the previous question, upon initiation of our UAV efforts, no one in our group had any experience with unmanned aircraft, as the intent of the systems purchased was to eliminate this as a hurdle to their usage. However, with our current effort, our unit’s full-time pilot, who operates our three manned fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter, is undergoing some basic UAV training, as it is likely that U.S. regulations will require a licensed pilot to be in command of UAVs. This training will focus on flying via remote control and required procedural and regulatory operations. Q: How could unmanned systems improve existing aerial application technologies? A: UAVs have the potential to be an additional tool in an aerial applicator’s spray toolbox. On smaller jobs, the smaller platform
may be more economical than a full-size aircraft. Obviously, there are some safety concerns that aerial applicators have with UAVs operating in the same airspace that they are flying in each day that are, and will continue to be, addressed as things progress forward. Additionally, the smaller platform offers a cheaper, potentially more versatile method for remote sensing efforts. Q: How does using unmanned aircraft differ from current crop condition detection methods? How do you think multispectral imaging results obtained with a UAV could be improved? A: Because of their versatility and relatively low initial cost and operating expenses, UAVs have been increasingly used as a platform for acquiring multispectral and hyperspectral imagery for various applications in recent years. UAVbased imaging systems can obtain very high-resolution images at low altitudes and may have the potential for early detection of some crop pests and for accurate assessment of crop conditions compared with satellite and manned airborne imaging systems. However, small footprint images from low-flying UAV[s] require intensive geometric and radiometric corrections and subsequent mosaicking for extraction of meaningful data. Q: Do you believe unmanned systems are best used on the farm for crop disease detection, crop spraying or a blend of both? A: Remote sensing is likely to be the most immediate application of UAVs in the USA.
Q&A
Q: How do unmanned aircraft play into your studies related to spray drift? A: We are developing some testing protocols, similar to those we use on manned aircraft, to measure the spray deposition pattern, effective swath width and spray drift from UAVs. Q: What do you think is the main shortcoming of using unmanned aircraft? And how can this problem be addressed? A: The safe implementation of UAVs in the agricultural arena, as well as all other potential applications, will depend on their safe integration with manned aircraft into the National Airspace System. Other issues related to small UAVs include their small operating range, short operating time and low reliability. UAS will be supplementary to manned aircraft and satellites as another type of remote sensing platforms for agricultural and other applications. Q: Will farmers have to become savvy UAS operators in the future, or do you think a pay-for-service model will fit into farming better? A: A certified UAV operator is needed for farming no matter [if ] it is operated by farmers or by payfor-service. For remote sensing applications, the additional need for some expertise in the processing and interpretation of the acquired images will likely make a pay-forservice model more convenient for most farmers. With respect to any potential spray applications, knowing how to operate a UAV is a long way from making a successful spray application using one. Successful spray applications
A Rotomotion SR200 UAV with a custom-built agricultural spray system. Photos courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture.
require additional experience and expertise that will also most likely result in the pay-for-service model being the most convenient, at least in the short term. Q: When do you hope to complete your study, and what audience would benefit from your recommendations? A: We have a number of UAV studies planned, all of which require addressing the issues we have had with our UAVs. While a
number of basic spray application assessments, with respect to nozzle selection and operation and determination of effective swath and application procedures, have been under consideration, initial efforts will likely focus on remote sensing efforts. Spray application research efforts would be targeted towards optimizing spray systems and procedures to maximize on-target deposition and efficacy while minimizing off-target movement. Mission Critical
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Diseases and Blights for Crops Detecting pathogens is a main potential use for unmanned systems in agriculture. Here’s a look at just some of the crop diseases that our farmers face.
Gourds/Roots Cucumber mosaic disease infects plants early in the season, leaving them severely stunted with malformed leaves and fruits that are rough on the surface. Color breaking will occur on the fruit, causing the fruit to show green blotchy patterns. Peppers, spinach, lettuce, celery, tomatoes and beans are all affected by the disease.
Blackleg potato discolors the plant’s stem to black, which is then followed by rapid wilting and yellowing of the leave. It thrives at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, but in contrast to other bacteria, it does not grow above 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
All photos courtesy Department of Agriculture. 20
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Fruits The Asian citrus psyllid is responsible for spreading a disease called Huanglongbing (HLB) also known as citrus greening. The bacterial disease takes hold in a tree and eventually causes it to produce green, bitter-tasting fruit and yellows leaves. HLB can be difficult to detect, as symptoms usually do not show up for more than a year after the tree has become infected.
Fire blight, which affects apples and pears, leaves lesions on the fruit surface that later turn brown to black. Droplets of bacterial ooze may form on the lesions and fruits, which then blacken completely and shrivel. Optimum temperature for growth is 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
overview
Grains The soybean cyst nematode (SCN) affects large portions of soybean fields, leaving plants that are severely stunted and yellow. The duration of the SCN lifecycle runs from three to four weeks, but this may be influenced by environmental conditions mainly adequate temperature and moisture.
Fusarium head blight (FHB) appears all over the developing grain, causing it to shrink and wrinkle inside the head. The infected kernels have a rough, shriveled appearance, ranging in color from pink, grey to light brown. FHB infections thrive in periods of high moisture or humidity and moderately warm temperatures between 59 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
After flowering, Stagonospora Nodorum blotch (SNB) lesions develop on the glumes of wheat, starting at the tip, covering the plant with dark brown to dark purple streaks with ash gray areas. The blotch spores generally require 12 to 18 hours of leaf wetness for infection, and the disease develops most rapidly between 68 and 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
The tan spot pathogen survives through the winter as black pinhead-sized fruiting structures that develop on the previous season’s wheat stems. The pathogen releases sexual spores in spring and early summer, which are dispersed by wind, and then germinate and infect wheat in a wide range of temperatures. Prolonged wet periods (24 hours or greater) can result in spore germination and infection on wheat leaves.
Barley yellow dwarf (BYD) is a worldwide virus disease of highly important grasses, including wheat, rice and maize. High light intensity and cooler temperatures between 59 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit generally favor its growth, with symptoms, such as leaf discoloration, which may attract aphids to virus-infected plants.
Initial symptoms of Septoria leaf blotch (STB) develop on the lower leaves of what and expand into irregular brown lesions that only appear on the leaf veins. Lesions are sphere- or ball-shaped, gelatinous, and gray-brown. STB is dispersed by either wind or splash rain during the wheat-growing season and can initiate infections under favorable environmental requires more than 24 hours of wetness and is most destructive between 50 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
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uncanny valley
UAS Insurance Demand Growing for Agriculture Market Interest in insuring unmanned aircraft for precision agriculture use is soaring, according to Coloradobased insurance broker Transport Risk Management, as more farmers become aware of their benefits. “The long and short of it is, it’s by far our biggest market, it’s by far the highest level of interest today, and it’s the most easily insurable, too,” says Terry Miller, who founded the company a decade ago and started insuring unmanned aircraft three years ago. Interest in unmanned systems is peaking due to the time of year — it’s planting season — and “over the past three or four months, there has been a big push by manufacturers to sell their products through implement dealers. … The agriculture industry is just more aware of it, because they’ve been demonstrating it at county fairs and state fairs. You name it. … As it stands today, we’ve got several hundred insured and operating, so the market is really wide open,” he says. Transport Risk Management has a long history of brokering insurance for manned aviation systems for use in the entertainment industry. A few years ago, those same filmmakers approached the company wanting to use unmanned aircraft. “We had to find a way to insure those,” Miller says. The company writes contracts that cover how the aircraft is used and include bodily injury and liability as long as the aircraft is being operated for the purpose outlined in the application. The company accepts only about one out of every 30 applicants, 22
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and Miller says he’s careful to try to weed out the “cowboys” who aren’t dedicated to safe, professional use. “The ones who come in and do training, who say I’m going to think like a pilot, I’m going to think like a professional, I’m going to act like a professional, that’s who we want to insure,” he says. One issue hanging over the small unmanned systems world now is the Federal Aviation Administration’s ability to regulate them, which was cast into doubt by a National Transportation Safety Board judge’s recent ruling that threw out the first $10,000 fine the FAA had levied on a man flying a small UAS for hire. The FAA is appealing the ruling to the full NTSB and it is stayed until then, but Miller said the case, and the FAA’s stance against most commercial use of unmanned aircraft, isn’t affecting the insurance business. “We’re state regulated, not federal regulated, and the FAA doesn’t tell us what to insure and what not to insure,” he says. “In a lot of cases, the FAA has called us to ask what kind of losses we’re seeing.”
little bit challenging, because something like privacy laws may differ from state to state. … Criminal activity is absolutely excluded from insurance policies. That can present a conundrum. We deal with that now by looking at those laws” on a state-by-state basis, he says. “Today, they’re limiting our personal injury coverage in those states that are pushing [anti-UAS] legislation,” he says. Some anti-UAS measures are being pushed at the local municipality level too, he says, so his company has to investigate those as well. Another challenge facing the insurance industry is a lack of airworthiness certification, which is one place where the FAA could help, Miller says. If manufacturers could work to meet those standards, it would result in better aircraft and help reduce failures. “Some of these manufacturers, that put out junk and don’t stand behind them … the first time they get nailed with some major liability suit will be when this industry changes,” he says.
Challenges Because the company is regulated by the individual states, that’s one area where challenges lie, Miller says. Several states have sought to outlaw or at least strictly limit the use of UAS, which can affect the type of insurance that can be offered.
Miller says he insures UAS, because “we want to see innovation.” He cites Matternet, a startup company that wants to create a network of small unmanned aircraft that could deliver medicine and other parcels in areas that don’t have roads, as an example of the type of innovation he’d like to see.
“One of the nice things about manned aircraft and regulated aircraft is we can look at one set of rules, really, but with unmanned, until the FAA does something, it’s a
“We want to see groups like Matternet emerge, because they are spurring technology and innovation, because it’s going to be good for everybody,” Miller says.
Watching Grass Grow
UAS Await Impending Agriculture Market By Zach Rosenberg
There are around 2,800 crop-spraying aircraft in the United States, according to the National Agricultural Aviation Association. Farmers have a strong tradition of keeping private aircraft and helicopters for observation, often flying from their own fields. But now many modern farmers are turning to sophisticated technologies — GPS-guided tractors, automated cow milkers and satellite photography. In the realm of agricultural aviation, a clear shift is underway toward Mission Critical
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using unmanned aircraft systems to augment or replace crewed aircraft. But to what extent will this shift happen and when? The military has long since moved toward unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance and observation, and a farmer’s requirements are not so different. For now, flying for commercial purposes at any size is strictly prohibited. The Federal Aviation Administration had said it would treat small UAS flown by farmers over their own property as model aircraft, but never made that its official position. All that may change: A recent National Transportation Safety Board case is pending that may lift those rules altogether. The latest ruling limits what restrictions the FAA can legally apply to model aircraft, meaning that operators are under no obligation not to operate commercially. The FAA has appealed the ruling, but if upheld the small UAS market may come much sooner than the agency would like. Hundreds of farmers and related companies have purchased relatively small UAS, ranging substantially in size and cost. Public entities — mainly universities — operate UAS for experimental agricultural purposes, not only to establish and refine procedures or check experimental crop plots but to train future operators. Adoption has been limited by regulatory restriction and the uncertainty surrounding it, but manufacturers report plenty of interest. Some are attending large farmers’ conventions to display their wares. And the civil market certainly presents lucrative possibilities. A 2013 AUVSI economic report suggests that civil UAS could be a $14 billion industry within three years of regulatory changes. 24
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Examples of integration can be found abroad. Japan in particular has used UAS to observe and spray crops for years, accounting for the majority of the aerial spraying business there. But the incentives are different. In Japan, rice is planted on smaller farms and sometimes on inclines, making ground spraying difficult. Crucially, though UAS remain largely illegal in Japanese airspace, the responsible authority is delegated not to Japan’s aviation ministry but its agriculture ministry, which permits such uses. Less developed nations, including Argentina and Uruguay, have seen UAS used in observation-only roles. Implementation As with many technologies anticipated for future use, public imagination has run rampant, with articles prophesying everything from nano-UAS swarms to aerial pest dogfighters. But for the foreseeable future, UAS will have a much more limited role in agriculture. The lowest hanging fruit is the agricultural imagery market, virtually a direct translation of tasks from the military. The machinery and technology used is much the same in terms of size, weight and power requirements as small UAS — some are in fact direct descendants, notably the hand-launched, fixed-wing UAS. Certain imagery types are more useful than others. Many UAS providers put near-infrared or long-wave infrared sensors on their systems, but others have application. “There are some potential applications with SWIR [short-wave, infrared] wavelengths, estimating the amount of crop residue covering the soil, but this is not a high
priority,” says Dr. Raymond Hunt of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Thermal infrared (most FLIR cameras) is very important, because plants actively growing are using lots of water for transpiration. The evaporation of water in the leaf cools it down — the amount of cooling depends on weather: sun, wind, air temperature and humidity. “My ideal sensor would have seven bands: blue, green, red, rededge, near-infrared, thermal and one to measure incident light,” he continues. The sensors are heavy, complex and expensive, so common use is likely to be limited to one or two bands. Business Models The industry’s economics are still very much in flux, but some business models have formed. One is that of the service provider, essentially renting out UAS time to whomever needs it, be it farmers, bridge inspectors or real estate agents. Another is dedicated agricultural use by consultants, who are often brought in to either diagnose and treat problems or increase acreage yield. Still another is a local cooperative group or individual farmer, but the costbenefit still weighs against this model. “By obsessing about the unmanned, which is one application, we’ve blinded ourselves to what is actually happening and what is special. To me what is special is we are putting networking in the sky,” says Terravion’s Robert Morris, a former UAS operator turned agriculture imagery provider. “I would like to throw down the gauntlet to the technical developers: We have yet to see a platform that’s better than a Cessna. We’re growing customers,
we have money, and we’re totally looking to buy beyond a Cessna, … but it’s got to be cheaper for our operations.”
where working on the land is difficult are juicy targets. Olive and citrus growers, plant nurseries and vineyards are viewed as prime markets.
drought has affected farmers, routine imagery can determine which plants are healthy and, thus, worth the scarce water to save.
The data itself has its limits. Ostensibly, UAS will allow farmers to gather information without the time-consuming and sometimes difficult act of walking out to diagnose a plant’s problems, but the commercially available cameras can only provide so much resolution. Though a great deal can be surmised simply by the time of year, radius of affected plants, etc., confirming a diagnosed problem still requires a person to walk out for a closer look.
“In the growth crop areas, potatoes look like they’re our early adopter area,” he continues. “It’s just a cultural thing.”
Though no company agreed to address the topic on the record, several are working to develop UAS capable of replacing even limited human intervention. Actions requiring close or physical contact with the plant — taking samples, diagnosing pest infestations — are considered addressable concerns.
The largest fields are still better served by conventional aircraft, which can cover more ground in less time. Though military-oriented UAS have displayed phenomenal flight endurance, most UAS pitched for agriculture use are nowhere near as capable and require frequent refueling breaks. Since the time of day is a factor in data standardization, gathering all necessary information in a single run is ideal. Early adopters are likely to be farmers growing relatively higher value crops and first adopters of other technology. Though some farmers have adopted GPS-guided tractors, computer modeling, remote sensing and more, the basic techniques have changed little in the last few thousand years. The agriculture industry as a whole tends to be technologically conservative. “We’re trying not to approach farmers. We’re trying to work with those vendors or providers that already have clients, crop consultants and companies, so we leapfrog,” says Richard Sherman, marketing director at ElleVision.
Likewise, such UAS capabilities can greatly benefit in areas where economic pressure means the difference between a crop’s success or failure. In California, for example, where a severe
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High-value crops and those Mission Critical US_4_45x6_5inches_04_14.indd 1
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The Guided Systems SICX-10E unmanned helicopter used for the demonstration. All photos courtesy Chad Dennis.
Crop Surveying Via UAS Sunbelt Ag Expo Demo Shows the Way During the 2013 growing season, Georgia’s Center of Innovation for Aerospace joined with the Center of Innovation for Agribusiness to test the potential of a small unmanned aircraft to study the health of cotton and peanut crops. A small unmanned helicopter, built by Stockbridge, Ga.-based Guided Systems Technologies, flew over fields that were part of the Sunbelt Ag Expo going on at the time. 26
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The project was undertaken by the two innovation centers along with University of Georgia agronomists, aviation specialists from Middle Georgia State College’s School of Aviation, and with funding support from the Georgia Peanut and Cotton Commissions. The flights were done under a certificate of authorization obtained by Middle Georgia State College from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We’re using these UAVs to take aerial digital photograph of these plots and then translate that information back to the producer and identify what’s the health of their crop,” said Bo Warren, director of the agribusiness innovation center, in a video produced for the center’s website. “By doing that, that saves farmers from having to walk through that field and individually inspect every plant.” Chad Dennis, assistant director of Middle Georgia’s Institute of Applied Aerospace Research and UAS program coordinator for the centers of innovation, says the SICX-10E electric helicopter from Guided Systems put in 10 missions from 18 June to 20 Sept., for a total of more than 30 flights. The system carried a Tetracam ADC Lite camera that could record green, red and near-infrared light with its 3.2-megapixel camera.
Testing, Testing Exceeding Expectations The results of the demonstration “far exceeded everyone’s expectations, and the agronomists indicated the type of high-quality imagery collected by these unmanned vehicles will help producers and agricultural consultants in identifying the health of crops on a weekly and even daily basis,” the Center of Innovation for Agribusiness said in a recap. “This technology gives producers the ability to identify areas of pest damage and water and nutrient deficiencies in a field so that they could spot treat with water, herbicide or fungicide whenever necessary, providing a number of cost-saving benefits.” Each day of a mission, Dennis would station two spotters in strategic locations to make sure the skies were clear of other aircraft. “They are not there to watch the UAV; they are there to watch everything but the UAV,” he says. He flew many of the missions himself. All of the flights were less than 700 feet above ground level. Dennis says the flights helped researchers assess the health of the crops and proved out some other benefits as well, including being able to estimate yield rates. “We started to see some trending data to show we could very easily scout a field halfway into the growing season and go ahead and know what the yield was going to be,” he says. “That helps the farmer better plan and eventually allows those that are purchasing the crops to better plan.” The demonstration grew from a meeting between Guided Systems and the agricultural researchers, says Roderick Gilbert, senior agribusiness coordinator at the Center of Innova-
Imagery from the Sunbelt Ag Expo UAS flights.
tion for Agribusiness. John Beasley, at the time a University of Georgia professor, suggested a demonstration at the Sunbelt Ag Expo, which features research plots of crops.
tion started, just to be a baseline. Now we have something on paper that says we can detect something, what it is and how do you resolve the problem; we’re far from it.”
That led to a meeting with the director of the Sunbelt Ag Expo to create proof-of-concept flights over the plots, Gilbert says.
Dennis says the team is now planning phase two for this summer, an effort that will build on the 2013 work. The basic flight envelope and mission profile have been developed, including the knowledge of the best times of day to fly and the best altitudes to reach.
Dennis says the crops at the expo are research crops grown by professors at the University of Georgia who use different seed germinations, planting techniques, and fertilizer levels and vary them row by row. “You’ve really got this petri dish out there where you’ve got all kinds of things going on,” Dennis says. “It gives us a very controlled environment where we know exactly what’s been put on that soil, we know the type of seed that was used, we know exactly when it was planted.” This Year’s Crop Gilbert says, “This project was just the first step to get the conversa-
The team will conduct six missions this summer. In 2013, they flew missions every other week except during the height of growing season, when they went weekly. This year, they will be spaced out a little more to allow more time for assessing large crop changes. “We’ve learned a lot of the basic lessons and kind of had to vet it out, so we’re hoping this summer to really get into the meat and potatoes of it,” Dennis says. Mission Critical
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The birds did not exhibit fear when the researchers used a Parrot AR.Drone to fly over the coop. Photo courtesy Steven Thomas, Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Bring Out Your Dead Researchers Develop Robot to Monitor Chicken Houses By Karen Aho
Poultry operators are caught in a Catch 22: To reduce mortality rates, a farmer has to walk through a growout house every day to remove diseased birds, but each time he does so, he risks fresh cross-contamination. “Every time a person goes into the house, there’s a chance of getting the birds sick or, vice versa, the birds getting the person sick,” says Colin Usher, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “There’s actually a lot of interest in getting people out of the house as much as possible.” Aside from the occasional equipment jam, the six-week broiler grow-out period has become almost fully automated. Feed and water is delivered via machine, and tempera28
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ture and air quality are monitored via computer. All that remains is that distinctly sentient task: to wade through a flock of 50,000 birds and to identify and remove the ill and the dead. To date, no technology exists that can replicate the job. Now, however, scientists at Georgia Tech’s Agricultural Technology Research Program are working on building a robot to take it on. If successful, researchers say their GOHBot — short for Grow-Out House Robot — would be the first autonomous machine to interact with live animals, a development with widespread implications for the agricultural industry. “There are no fully autonomous systems that are deployed in com-
mercial or military capacities,” says Usher. “Everything is teleoperated at this point.” Simple autonomous machines do exist. For example, the Roomba, the first robotic vacuum cleaner, reacts to obstacles without a remote operator, as do some lawnmowers and palletizers, such as those used in Amazon’s massive warehouses. But, as Usher notes, those machines employ a limited number of responses to structured environments. “They don’t have to make decisions,” he says. “The Roomba has a pseudo-random pattern that allows it to optimize its coverage.” By contrast, the GOHBot — or, as researchers playfully call it, the Grow-Out House Roomba — would have to calculate how to respond to living, moving organisms, a far more complex analysis. “The interesting part of the problem is going to be performing the autonomous parts of the navigation in the presence of the animals and high populations of densely packed animals,” he says. “And you want to make sure you’re not running them over or hurting them in any other fashion.”
Spotlight Poultry Boom Industrial poultry farmers in the United States today grow broilers that render 5.8 pounds of meat, on average, in 47 days. Compare that to the 56 days it took to grow 3.5 pounds of meat in 1970, and it’s no wonder chicken has become so plentiful and cheap. America is now the world’s largest producer of poultry meat, harvesting nine billion of the world’s 40 billion broilers every year. Most of it we eat ourselves; about 17 percent is exported. Yet the broiler mortality rate has dropped little during this same period, from 5 percent in 1970 to 3.8 percent today, despite meticulous sanitation procedures. In a flock of 25,000 broilers, that’s 750 dead birds, or an average of 18 broilers a day. Over a year that totals more than 300,000 birds, for a loss to farmers of some $800 million. One of the riskiest places for contamination is at boot stations by the entrance. “The real goal, if possible, is to keep a person out of the house for the entire grow out,” says Usher. “If we could use robotic systems, that would be an ideal situation.” ATRI, which has been instrumental in developing poultry technology since the 1970s, has now completed the first of its three-part research aiming to do just that. Will Chicks Mind? Researchers could equip grow houses with sensors, programmed to identify problems. But such a system would only add cost without resolving the full issue; farmers would still have to enter to remove the failing birds. “You have to have some type of utility for the robot to make it feasible,” Usher says. A mobile unit could do both and be programmed to remove hen-
house eggs and other jobs. “We’re working with farmers to identify the various tasks they carry out and evaluating whether we can carry out each of these tasks with a robot,” Usher says. Before creating the brains of the unit, though, researchers had to tackle etiquette: Could a robot and 50,000 chickens live in harmony? “Our main concern this year was to evaluate it from an animal-welfare perspective,” says Usher. “We wanted to make the argument that we’re not introducing additional stress to the birds. The second part was looking at the feasibility of it, if you can actually drive the robot through the environment.” Stress would not only make the birds susceptible to injury and illness, it would also affect appetite, leaving farmers without plump birds for market. Teaming up with poultry scientists at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, researchers put 500 newborn chicks in a 24-by-16-foot UGA lab, to duplicate the density of a commercial grow-out house (typically 500-by-40 feet with 50,000 broilers) and raised them under typical conditions the full six weeks. A farm hand entered once per day, moving among the flock. But so, too, did two robots, at different times. Because no metrics existed to measure stress in broilers, the scientists developed their own guidelines, comparing birds’ reactions to each inspector in their midst. For each, the scientists tracked the average speed of the chicken moving inside the grow house at the time; the average “avoidance distance,” or the distance the chickens kept between themselves and the robots or person; their flight response, if any (and if the birds did flee, how many did so
and how fast and how far). They also studied how long it took the chicks to resume their normal behavior after a visitation. The researchers outfitted the lab with cameras, microphones, thermometers and environmental sensors to help rule out external changes. Scientists would also be able to hear if the birds emitted stress calls. While the birds did not exhibit any panic behavior to the aerial robot — a $300, off-the-shelf Parrot AR.Drone — they kept their distance and were apparently made uncomfortable by the drone’s downdraft. More importantly, however, the birds grew increasingly nonplussed by the ground robot, a squat, 20-inch, 4WD SuperDroid Wi-Fi All Terrain Robot outfitted with a laptop, cameras and bumpers. In fact, the chickens gave less berth to the ground robot than to people and even appeared to treat it as one of their own. “As they grew larger and larger we got to the point where we were using the bumper to bump the chickens and get them to stand up and move away,” Usher says. A preliminary analysis shows no statistically significant weight difference in the birds raised in the presence of the robots. Both units were equipped with cameras. Researchers will work with farmers to assess whether the images can provide adequate information for the jobs at hand. Usher and his team are now seeking grants for the next stages in their research: automating the robot to navigate around animals and perform critical tasks. If successful, these robots would not only reduce the incidence of disease. They could help identify metrics to further fine-tune livestock processing. Mission Critical
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Robert Blair. Photo courtesy Robert and Rhonda Blair.
The Unmanned Farmer By Gaea Honeycutt
Nurture the soil day in, day out. Plant seeds, tend the fields, watch them grow. Harvest the crops, sell the produce, and do it all again next year. There you have it, steady, solid and as predictable as a Swiss timepiece — the rhythm of farming. But nothing is that simple. Throw in unseasonable weather — a cold snap, a drought or flooding sparked by torrential rains — and that steady picture grows hazy with turbulent conditions. Add a few pests (animal, human or otherwise) and what is, on the surface, predictable becomes persistently unpredictable.
Farmer, precision agriculture
evangelist and writer of “The Unmanned Farmer” blog Robert Blair understands the expense and loss that can be caused by unforeseen developments. A decade ago, Blair began using a handheld PDA with a GPS system to better monitor the crops and conditions on his family’s Three Canyon Farm in Idaho. He soon graduated to crop flyovers in a Cessna and immediately saw the potential for imaging in agriculture. After buying an unmanned aircraft in 2006, he hasn’t looked back. Historically, farming has been a reactive enterprise, with farmers responding to the next event. In re-
flecting on how he used to practice farming, Blair explained how he’d discover problems after the harvest. “The crops are already dead, and you can’t do anything else with that crop.” He continues, “With the UAV, you’re now proactive and can do things during the season.” Most farms are 83 percent larger today than they were in the 1980s, increasing from 600 acres to 1,100 acres or more — difficult to surveil, much less monitor completely each week. The difference between reactive and proactive crop management can mean tens of thousands of dollars. In his early days of using a UAS to help manage his crops, Blair credits the tool with avoiding a near catastrophe. “I was able to take images of elk and deer on my property, along with using the yield monitor [from my harvesting equipment],” a situation he may not have discovered until harvest season in previous Mission Critical
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years. “That roughly translated into $50,000. It’s no small thing. I can’t afford to feed animals like that.” However, much of the work is general scouting. Blair credits incorporating the UAS into his operations with helping him better understand what crops to grow, at what locations and when to grow them. “Now I have very good historic information to make changes within my operation,” he says. Blair’s adoption of a UAS in his operations has led to a second
career in unmanned systems in general. Beginning with selling UAS and public speaking, he’s become an advocate for including farmers in Federal Aviation Administration deliberations over the commercial use of UAS and for wider adoption of the systems. “This could be a very transformative technology. How does agriculture grow the food to feed nine billion people responsibly?” asks Blair, referring to world population growth forecasts. “UAVs can play a prominent role in helping
agriculture be successful.” Explaining the difference in perspective between farmers and mainstream UAS users, he highlights the fact that farming is a business. “It’s a tool, a piece of equipment, that a farmer has an investment in. If you’re relying on it for your operation, you’re not going to just go out there willy-nilly.” In fact, Blair noted that the UAS isn’t a timesaving tool. Without features tailored to the needs of agriculture, employing unmanned aircraft is a bit of a do-it-yourself experience. He spends twice the time on the computer as he does operating the plane. “When I take a look at a lot of the products that are currently available, and we’re not just talking UAVs, they’re developed from an engineer’s perspective, and you need an engineering degree in order to use them properly,” he says. And there are the external realities in owning property in isolated areas. Although mountainous, Idaho has its fair share of fires. UAS can help in firefighting and making other tasks safer.
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“An hour east of me on the Clear Water River, there was a survey being done [in 2010] of wildlife. Well, the helicopter crashed killing all three people on board.” If a UAS had been used instead of a manned flight, Blair says he believes the outcome may have been different. He views progress on the regulatory front as part of the solution, citing the long deliberation at the federal level as a major impediment to progress in the commercial sector. And aside from the advancements technological progress can generate, Blair notes how transformative a growing UAS sector can be in rural communities. New technology requires new jobs and sparks opportunity.
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