V O L U M E 3 N O . 3 • A u g u s t 2 0 1 3 • A U V S I • 2 7 0 0 S o u t h Q u i n c y S t r e e t , S u i t e 4 0 0 , A r l i n g t o n , VA 2 2 2 0 6 , U S A
Commercial Ag Goes Unmanned
Inside this issue:
Kansas State’s Ag Research Detecting Disease With UAS Autonomous Tractors Coming to Market
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CONTENTS
On the Cover 8
4
Lay of the Land Unmanned Systems Coming to Commercial Agriculture
Essential Components The Latest in Unmanned Ag
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State of the Art U.S. States Expected to Benefit from Robotic Agriculture
Uncanny Valley
A look at AUVSI’s UAS Integration Economic Impact Report
13 Technology Gap Smaller Can Be Better
On the cover: Yamaha’s RMAX is testing crop spraying on vineyards in California’s Napa Valley, one example of the rising use of unmanned systems in agriculture. Photo courtesy Yamaha. Page 10.
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14 Q & A Reza Ehsani, Associate Professor at the University of Florida
16 Timeline Planting the Seeds of Automation
22 18 Flying High in the Heartland
Kansas State University’s Unmanned Aircraft Program
Testing, Testing Robotic Tractors Take to the Field
27 End Users From Farmers to Intelligent Pilots
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Spotlight Oregon State Uses UAS for Potato Farming
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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Editor's Message
Editorial Vice President of Communications and Publications, Editor Brett Davis davis@auvsi.org Managing Editor Danielle Lucey lucey@auvsi.org
Contributing Writers Rich Tuttle Ashley Addington Holly Gonzalez
Advertising Senior Business Development Manager Mike Greeson mgreeson@auvsi.org +1 571 255 7787
A publication of
President and CEO Michael Toscano Executive Vice President Gretchen West AUVSI Headquarters 2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400 Arlington, VA 22206 USA +1 703 845 9671 info@auvsi.org www.auvsi.org
Taking a Look at an Exciting Field
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griculture is expected to be the largest commercial market for unmanned aircraft in the future, so it’s timely for this issue of Mission Critical to take another look at this field, pardon the pun. Earlier this year, AUVSI commissioned a study on the economic impact in the United States once unmanned aircraft are allowed to fly in the National Airspace System. Even though the report used conservative estimates, the numbers are eye opening: $82 billion worth of economic impact in the first decade after integration and more than 100,000 new, high-paying jobs created. In this issue, we discuss the report in a couple of places. State of the Art, on Page 6, takes a look at the states that are expected to fare the best, based on various factors, including their existing aerospace infrastructure. That doesn’t mean the jobs will automatically go there, however. Uncanny Valley, on Page 12, outlines the challenges that still remain and points out that if states pass legislation to tamp down on the use of unmanned aircraft, the jobs will likely go to states with more welcoming attitudes. Although economic forecasts are always interesting, getting hard data on how unmanned aircraft can save time and money is even better. Starting on Page 18, Managing Editor Danielle Lucey takes a look at the extensive unmanned aircraft program at Kansas State University. While it’s one of many institutions of higher learning that feature UAS programs, it’s focused on agriculture and on demonstrating the cost savings of UAS to farmers, agronomists and anyone else interested in improving agriculture. The university is planning a comparison between using satellite data to make planting and fertilizing deci-
Brett Davis
sions and using UAS data for the same purposes. “We’ve seen a whole lot of anecdotal evidence, but not a lot of solid, thoroughly grounded research,” says the university’s Mark Blanks. The results of that study should be interesting, and we’ll report back when they are available. In this issue we also take a look at the various ways unmanned systems can aid on the farm. The gist of it is that they can make various crop-related assessments much faster than the traditional walk-the-field method, and in farming, as in anything else, time is money. You may have noticed some of these articles in your issue of Unmanned Systems. Starting this year, we have been printing most of Mission Critical inside Unmanned Systems as a special quarterly insert. However, an expanded version goes up on the Web, where it can do things the print magazine can’t, mainly include links to videos, websites and advertisers’ sites. It’s an exciting way to bolster the printed content. Starting next year, you’ll also notice some repeated themes in the magazine. AUVSI is exploring how unmanned systems can aid in the fields of agriculture, as mentioned above, but also for first responders and public safety and in the exciting arena of automated vehicles — cars and trucks that include more automation to make driving safer. We’ll explore these topic areas more frequently in Mission Critical, but we’ll also save room for other topics as needed. Mission Critical
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UC Davis Studies Blueberry, Wine Production With UAS UC Davis has also used the RMAX in trials, flying over a series of Napa vineyards in hopes to help raise a better crop of grapes. “We’re finding it’s as effective as the current methods and more efficient,” says Steve Markofski, Yamaha’s business planner and trained RMAX operator, in an interview with Napa Valley Patch.
UC Davis researchers test an RMAX over a vineyard in Oakville, Calif. Photo courtesy Joe Proudman/UC Davis.
The University of California Davis is currently researching the benefits of having unmanned helicopters distribute pesticides in the agriculture industry. Current research has shown that using unmanned systems creates economic and production benefits for farmers. The small system used for research is a lightweight helicopter that has capabilities that extend much farther than typical farming methods. The Yamaha RMAX weighs approximately 200 pounds and has the ability to let farmers pay attention to detail over an exuberant amount of crops. “Of the total of 2,100 acres, blackberry infestation would barely cover 100 acres, but they’re scattered clumps and hard to access because of the hilly nature of the farm, hence the need for aerial control,” Terry Hubbard, a blackberry farm owner said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. The tests are showing that unmanned systems also an environmental benefit. There is minimal overspray of pesticides on crops, because the UAVs have pinpoint accuracy. “The ability to target clumps of blackberry with minimal overspray means that chemicals go further, and nontarget species are avoided,” Hubbard says. To see a video of UC Davis using the RMAX in Napa, click this QR code.
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Many farmers use a tractor with an attached spraying rig to water and nourish their crops. This method can lead to neglected vegetation due to the lack of accessibility. Watering by this method can also take more than 30 minutes per acre of land being treated, while UAVs take half of that time.
“For the half-hour it takes for the tractor rig to water an acre of crops, the RMAX can do the same space in a fraction of that time,” Ken Giles, UC Davis professor and colead researcher on the project, says. Another benefit of using an unmanned system is that they have greater sensitivity to detail and create less crop damage when in use. The RMAX is still awaiting approval for commercial agriculture use in the United States by the Federal Aviation Administration. Yamaha’s desire is to have the RMAX production line for commercial retailers by September 2015.
Robotic Milking Comes to Nova Scotia Nova Scotia recently secured the area’s first robotic milking machine, the DeLaval VMS robotic milker. The family-owned farm’s robotic milker has increased production and decreased labor needs, so Caseydale Farms can reap larger profits without more work. “Before you had to be home at 4 in the afternoon, and you had to be up at 4 in the morning to milk no matter what,” Brian Casey explained to The Hants Journal. The technology uses an electric collar to alert the cows to move to a holding area, a touchscreen computer with individual cow data, gated pathways and a robotic arm for milking.
Essential Components
WineHawk Rebrands, Releases Ag UAS pletely autonomous. The data it collects on plant research, crop production, crop protection and weather condition transfer to a software destination. “Our focus is on the data, not the platform,” says Patrick Lohman, chief operating officer for Precision Hawk, which has headquarters in Indiana and Toronto. “We consider ourselves more a remote sensing company than an unmanned aircraft company. The only thing that matters at the end of the day is the data that the user can collect and how that data can be translated to create a positive outcome for the user.” The Hawkeye Lancaster Mark II. Photo courtesy Precision Hawk.
WineHawk Labs has rebranded itself with a new company name — Precision Hawk, an unmanned aerial systems and remote sensing company now focused on commercial markets like agriculture and surveying. The company also released a new model UAS named the Hawkeye Lancaster Mark III for data collection for precision agriculture to coincide with the change. The Hawkeye has an integrated sensor suite and is com-
Trimble Releases Next Line of UAS for Surveyor and Geospatial Professionals On 17 June, Trimble launched its brand new line of unmanned aircraft systems that is geared toward individuals involved in environmental fields, including agriculture. Its newest addition is the Trimble UX5 aerial imager that is equipped with the new Trimble Access aerial application. The Trimble UX5 is able to provide a more productive experience for people who need to collect large sums of data and images in a brief amount of time, according to the company. The company says the system also allows information to be collected in a much safer way than typical surveying techniques. According to Trimble’s press release, the new software will enable “a wide variety of traditional surveying applications — such as topographic surveying, site and route planning, progress monitoring, volume calculations [and] disaster analysis — and as-built in industries such as surveying, oil and gas, mining, environmental services, and agriculture.”
“We didn’t start out to build birds,” says Ernest Earon, CEO Precision Hawk. “There are a lot of companies that can build an aircraft and do it fairly well, but as we started to build this internal intelligence and do more research on reducing the training and effort required to collect information, it became obvious that agriculture was not very well served from a data perspective. Precision Hawk is providing a solution to the area of precision agriculture where there is a clearly defined need.”
LP960 UAV Now Flown Via Tablet Lehmann Aviation’s new model LP960 UAS can now be controlled from a Windows 8 tablet. The French company’s UAS was created to assist in extensive agricultural needs. The benefits include “realtime control of farm animals/crops, detection of diseased crop, preparation of land reclamation, detection of areas where the crop is being eaten by pests, the spread of locusts monitoring, crop and forest trees growth monitoring, monitoring of the moisture level in crops and vineyards, and monitoring of the general state of different plantations,” according to a company release. LP960’s capabilities allow it to function in winds of 45 kph (28 mph) in 25 to 60 degrees Celsius (77 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit) weather. It creates georeferenced orthomosaics, digital elevation models, images and realtime video.
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the state of Growth AUVSI published a report, “The Economic Impact of UAS Integration in the United States” by Darryl Jenkins and Dr. Bijan Vasigh, in March 2013. Among other areas where UAS are expected to advance, the report explains how agriculture is
proving to be a prominent venture in the National Airspace System for unmanned aircraft. The following highlights the report’s top 10 states expected to benefit from the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System.
Washington The total number of UAS-related jobs in Washington will increase by 6,746 by 2017 and is projected to reach 9,967 new jobs by 2025. Washington state has 230 different crops.
California California is expected to see the greatest economic benefit and would gain 12,292 new jobs by 2017, with 18,161 jobs by 2025. California is the No. 1 state for agriculture in the U.S., with $37.5 billion generated a year.
Arizona
Arizona is expected to increase employment by 2,883 new jobs by 2017 and boom to 4,260 new jobs by 2025. Arizona grows the second most cantaloupe and honeydew melons, broccoli, and spinach of all the states.
Texas The Lone Star State will see an increase of 5,588 by 2017 and is expected to reach 8,256 new jobs by 2025. Texas has one of the longest growing seasons in the nation and is No. 1 in cotton and hay production.
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STATE OF THE ART
Connecticut Kansas The state is projected to achieve 2,515 new jobs by 2017, with 3,716 total new jobs by 2025. Agriculture is a big business in Kansas, which in 2009 ranked No. 1 in sorghum grain, No. 2 in milled wheat flour and No. 3 in farmland cattle.
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania is projected to raise employment to 2,021 in 2017 and grow to 2,986 new jobs by 2025. The Keystone State produces more mushrooms than any other state, with 443 million pounds a year.
This state is projected to grow by 2,764 new jobs by 2017 and rise to 4,084 by 2025. Even though the state is small, 60 percent of it is devoted to farmland. The state is also home to 70,000 acres of shellfish farms.
New York The Empire State will see its employment rise by 2,276 by 2017 and 3,363 by 2025. New York’s famous apple harvest was valued at $233 million in 2010, and the state ranks third in wine and juice grapes.
Virginia The state is expected to increase employment by 2,380 by 2017 and 3,517 by 2025. Virginia grows $136 million worth of soybeans, $101 million in corn and $559 million in poultry each year.
Florida This state will increase employment by 3,251 by 2017 and is expected to reach 4,803 new jobs in 2025. Agriculture is Florida’s second largest industry after tourism, and the state has 10 million acres of farmland, open space and forest.
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Lay of the Land
Unmanned Systems Coming to Commercial Agriculture By Rich Tuttle
W
ith the global market for unmanned systems in agriculture on the rise, companies that make robotic ground and air systems are paying close attention. More than 25,000 “field” or agriculture robots will be sold by 2015 — about the same as robots for military use, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Together, defense and agriculture make up the lion’s share of the nearly 94,000 “service robots for professional use” that the IFR believes will be sold in the next couple of years. Defense and agriculture are by far the two largest categories in IFR calculations, with robots for things like logistics, medicine and rescue coming in well behind. IFR statistics for 2011 sales of “professional use” robots — as opposed to robots for the industrial sector — offer a snapshot of this market. Overall unit sales in 2011 were up 9 percent over 2010, with unmanned systems for armies around the world coming in at 6,570, or 40 percent of the total. Right behind were sales of unmanned systems for agriculture at 5,000 units, or 31 percent.
Going Commercial For companies like Harvest Automation, such numbers confirm that they’re on the right track. The Billerica, Mass., company was founded in 2010 to look for ways to match robotic technology with sectors that still require difficult, repetitive manual labor, says CEO John M. Kawola. Meatpacking, warehousing, construction To see Harvest Automation’s robots in action, click this QR code.
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and a host of other areas were scrutinized. But, he says, the founders “pretty quickly honed in on agriculture,” because even though there have been significant advances in automation in “big ag” — wheat, corn and soy, for instance — “there still are large sectors of agriculture that rely heavily on manual labor.” One is horticulture, a category of specialty crops, which, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is defined as “intensively cultivated plants that are used by people for food, medicinal purposes and for aesthetic gratification.” This includes cut flowers, evergreens and bushes — “anything that is grown and sold in a container,” Kawola says. It’s “the nursery and greenhouse sector.” But horticultural work today, “from planting to maintenance to harvesting, is being done the way it was done 20 years ago, 100 years ago.” Harvest Automation’s goal, therefore, is to use robotic technology to address material handling, harvesting, information gathering and sensing, and information management. It’s worth the effort, because the wholesale horticulture market in the U.S. is huge, $17 billion. The crop value per acre is also huge — $15,000 for blueberries, for instance, compared to about $500 per acre for big ag crops like corn and wheat. In addition, it’s a much more continuous business — while big ag crops are planted and harvested once a year, horticulture crops can turn over every six weeks or so. All this presents several possibilities to robot makers. The one initially chosen by Harvest Automation is to take the relatively easy approach of picking up and moving containers or potted plants. Its first product, the HV-100, is designed to do this job in nurseries and greenhouses. Kawola says it’s easy to operate by farm workers, and,
Yamaha RMAXs spray approximately 2.5 million acres a year in Japan. Photo courtesy Yamaha Corp.
because it’s relatively small, weighing about 80 pounds and standing 2 feet tall, it’s a safe working companion. He says it can work individually or in teams, depending on size of an operation. A video of several of the robots at work shows their movements to be similar to those of iRobot’s household Roomba vacuum cleaner. In fact, says Kawola, Joseph Jones, cofounder and chief technology officer of Harvest Automation, was one of the inventors of the Roomba when he was at iRobot. Another company, Robotic Harvesting LLC of Simi Valley, Calif., has chosen to approach the market with a technically more complex system, one that harvests strawberries. The idea, says CEO Joe Wickham, is to develop a robot that can “automatically go up and down the fields picking strawberries. It’s still in the prototype phase. It’s a complex piece of machinery. It’s not something that can be done overnight, but we’re very interested in bringing this to market and getting commercial acceptance for it.” The recession slowed interest in the project and has prompted Robotic Harvesting to put it on the back burner. Wickham acknowledges that, at least for now, people are more discerning than robots when it comes to identifying strawberries that are not fully ripe or misshapen. On the other hand, he says, advances in sensors and image processing software, “like disparity mapping and other algorithms that are useful for these types of complex vision tasks,” are making the technology more feasible. Meanwhile, Wickham says, some universities are studying the idea of developing a breed of strawberry plant that’s nearly leafless, “and the thinner the leaf canopy, the easier it is to robotically harvest the berry,” Wickham says.
Challenges for Flight While companies like Harvest Automation and Robotic Harvesting are dealing with their own sets of challenges in agriculture, companies that want to use robot aerial systems in this market face others. One big hurdle is approval by the Federal Aviation Administration. It’s now illegal to fly unmanned aerial systems for commercial purposes in U.S. airspace. Assuming the Federal Aviation Administration approves low-level, line-of-sight operations — like those applicable to the monitoring and spraying of crops, for instance — analysts expect the market to boom. An AUVSI report in March 2013 says that during the period, between 2015-2025, integrating UAS into the national airspace will contribute $82 billion to the U.S. economy — a whopping $75.6 billion of which will go directly to agriculture. Another $3.2 billion will boost the public safety sector, and the remaining $3.2 billion will go to the “other” category. More than 100,000 jobs would be created. The 38-page report, “The Economic Impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the United States,” says unit sales of UAS will rocket from just under 40,000 in 2015 — when FAA is expected to give its approval — to about 160,000 by 2025. Even so, the study’s authors take what they say is a conservative approach, using “100,000 unit sales per year as a conservative benchmark.” One of the authors, Bijan Vasigh, a professor of transportation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., says the numbers could be higher, or lower. “We are really projecting what will happen in a normal scenario. If the scenario is more conducive for [unmanned aircraft], the impact would be much stronger.” At the same time, unforeseen circumstances “could impede progress.” Mission Critical
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Yamaha is testing spraying vineyards in Napa Valley through a COA with the FAA. Photo courtesy Yamaha Corp.
Some aren’t sure how the FAA will rule, but Vasigh is optimistic. “Frankly, I don’t see that much problem with FAA. I’m a little bit positive on go ahead, especially at lower altitude.” Optimism, with a bit of caution, is also expressed by Young Kim, general manager of BOSH Precision Agriculture, Newport News, Va. BOSH, which has been oriented to the military UAS market, is shifting its sights to UAS for agriculture because the market is big and steady — as opposed to defense, which is big but probably won’t be steady forever. “As an entrepreneur, I’m an optimist,” Kim says. At the same time, he sees no large, single, organized group engaging the FAA. “If we can get the farmer, UAV vendors, universities, economic development people, ag trade organizations,” like state cotton and peanut commissions and citrus growers, all addressing the FAA with a unified voice on safety and certification and policy, possibly with AUVSI participation, success would be more certain.
Foreign Expertise Japan is well ahead of the U.S. in the use of unmanned aerial systems for agriculture. In 1983, the Japanese government asked Yamaha to help it develop an unmanned helicopter for agricultural duties. The country was faced with an aging farming population and wanted to make things like spraying more efficient, according to Steve Markofski, a U.S.-based new business planner for the company. In 1991, he says, Yamaha began to market its first ag-oriented unmanned helo, the R50. Today, 2,150 Yamaha RMAX unmanned helos spray about 2.5 million acres a year in Japan, covering about 40 percent of To read AUVSI’s “The Economic Impact of UAS Integration in the United States” report, with information on agriculture, click this QR code.
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the country’s rice paddies. The government backed the idea from the beginning, with the Japanese department of agriculture responsible for regulation. Yamaha hopes to translate its success in Japan to the U.S. One area that it thinks is promising is spraying vineyards. Yamaha is testing the idea, under a certificate of authorization from the FAA, by flying over vineyards in Napa, Calif. They’re about the same size as rice paddies in Japan, five acres or so, and therefore a good match to the RMAX’s four-gallon chemical payload capacity, Markofski says. Tractors, traditionally used in Napa vineyards, can spray about two acres an hour, but RMAX can do 12 to 15 acres an hour. And with RMAX, Markofski says, there’s no soil compaction, no crop damage, the operator is not exposed to chemicals and it is safer, because he doesn’t have to drive in challenging terrain, like slippery hills. “We’re looking at areas [in the U.S.] that we think align directly to the RMAX, and vineyards is one that jumped out at us,” Markofski says. Canada’s MicroPilot also is waiting for a green light from the FAA. The company, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a leading manufacturer of UAS autopilots as well as the maker of CropCam, a camera-toting fixed-wing UAS that has made a name for itself in crop monitoring. CropCams have been sold in places like Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and South America, but approval to fly in the U.S. would be a big boost, says Pierre R. Pepin, vice president of sales and marketing. He says one business model might be to work with those who sell pesticides, for example. They also could sell UAS services. A customer would therefore not only get a product from the seller, but also precise images of his crops. “Once you’re allowed to fly,” Pepin says, “it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see how you can use those little birds.” Rich Tuttle is a longtime aerospace and defense journalist and contributor to AUVSI’s publications.
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Uncanny valley
Behind the Economic Report
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Barriers to Cross Before Benefits are Seen
UVSI’s new report on the economic impact of unmanned aircraft flying in the National Airspace System paints a positive picture of what will happen once UAS can be used commercially, but there are still hurdles to be overcome. The report, written by Darryl Jenkins and Dr. Bijan Vasigh, concludes that precision agriculture and public safety are the most promising areas, together making up 90 percent of the known potential markets. Within that breakdown, the agriculture market is expected to be 10 times the size of the public safety market, so in general the commercial future will be most heavily felt on the nation’s farms.
Challenges Before this can happen, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration needs to allow UAS to be used for commercial purposes. “The main inhibitor of U.S. commercial and civil development of the UAS is the lack of regulatory structure,” the report says. “Because of current airspace restrictions, nondefense use of UAS has been extremely limited.” The current congressional mandate calls for this to happen by 2015, but should that date slip, the expected benefits, including jobs and taxes, will slip as well. “Every year that integration is delayed, the United States loses more than $10 billion in potential economic impact,” the study says. “This translates to a loss of $27.6 million per day that UAS are not integrated into the NAS.”
Necessary Conditions The projected economic impact varies from state to state. There are challenges even at the state level, however. The projections in the report are based on the current airspace activity and infrastructure in a given state, so “states with an already thriving aerospace industry are projected to reap the most economic gains.” To read the entire Economic Report online, click this QR code.
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The report says there are other conditions that will affect the forecast in addition to that and the creation of regulations permitting UAS use. They include: • Sufficient capital must be available to smaller manu- facturing companies • There must be financing available to UAS buyers • There must be insurance to cover liabilities • The U.S. Gross Domestic Product must grow by at least 3 percent a year over the time period. Anti-UAS legislation is also emerging as a factor. A number of states have passed legislation to hamper the use of unmanned aircraft, or even eliminate it outright. As of early July, five states had passed anti-UAS bills (Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Idaho and Texas), but anti-UAS bills were defeated in 21 states. Such legislation was still pending in nine states. Most recently, the Maine legislature passed “An Act to Protect the Privacy of Citizens From Domestic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Use,” which would have regulated police use. Gov. Paul LePage vetoed the bill, saying it would have just led to more lawsuits “especially when we do not have a drone problem in Maine.” Instead of passing legislation, he said he would use an executive order to have the commissioner of public safety establish guidelines for the use of unmanned aircraft by law enforcement agencies. So there are many factors that will ultimately decide where UAS-related jobs will go. The economic fates of states relating to unmanned aircraft “will likely shift … as states work to attract UAS jobs in the years following integration,” the report says. “Future state laws and regulations could also cause some states to lose jobs while others stand to gain jobs. In conclusion, while we project more than 100,00 new jobs by 2025; states that create favorable regulatory and business environments for the industry and the technology will likely siphon jobs away from those that do not.”
Technology Gap
Smaller Can Be Better GTRI Researchers Develop Credit-Card Sized Gas Chromatograph
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esearchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute are developing a scaled-down gas chromatograph that could be used for early detection of crop diseases while taking up no more space than a credit card. Making such systems much smaller and more mobile would make farmers more efficient, as they could determine quickly whether crops are threatened by disease and take action before it’s too late. “The problem has always just been you take a sample in the field, ship it off to a lab, then in a week or two you get the results. That just doesn’t really fit the paradigm of what we’re trying to do with these smart farms,” says Gary McMurray, chief of GTRI’s Food Processing Technology Division. “We need to get sensors that work in the field.”
“Whenever you’re dealing with the nano or micro world, it’s challenging,” McMurray says. “It taught me patience,” Xu says, noting that the waferto-wafer bonding took months to perfect. The researchers benefited from the school’s nanotechnology core facility, which allows fabrication from the nano to the micro range. They have cleared many of the technical hurdles and have obtained good initial results comparable with a traditional chromatograph. They plan to conduct field testing by December. Having a system that size means it could be flown on small unmanned aircraft, or multiple systems could be placed on ground robots. “That micro gas chromatograph is still going to take 10 minutes to run the sample, but we envision you might have 30, 40, 50 of these sitting on a ground robot,” McMurray says. “You take a sample, you run it through the next micro gas chromatograph. Those are running while you’re taking new samples. When you start getting data back, you can flush it and reuse it again.” The system could eventually help detect diseases such as peach tree root rot, which can destroy entire fields, and phytophthora infestans, which caused the potato blight that led to famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s. “It’s helpful to find these as soon as possible,” McMurray says. “By the time you can see any physical symptoms, in many cases the plant is already dead.”
The small components of the gas chromatograph include the column, left, and the detector, right. Photo courtesy Gary McMurray.
He has been developing the tiny gas chromatograph with research scientist Jie Xu, Ph.D. candidate Milad Navaei, and other researchers at GTRI, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and the University of Georgia. The system’s column, where the gas interacts with the interior walls, is about the size of a quarter, and the detector is about half the size of a penny, says Xu, and “if you combine everything, it’s smaller than a credit card.” Developing such diminutive systems presents a host of challenges, from bonding wafers to coating a column with a thin layer of polymer so tiny that to measure its thickness it has to be broken and put under an electron microscope.
Building the tiny sensors is one thing, but making sense of the mass of data that can result is another challenge. “We want to be able to get down to a plant-by-plant discrimination basis,” McMurray says, which will require tackling the data fusion and analysis problem, another hurdle his team hopes to clear this summer. Once the technology is matured, it could be used for a variety of things, McMurray and Xu say. It can be used for detecting chemicals in soil, evaluating the use of fertilizer, making sure that plants sold from greenhouses are disease free, even for biomedical needs having nothing to do with agriculture. “Once the technology is developed, the application is pretty broad,” Xu says. Mission Critical
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Q: What is HLB, and how does it threaten crops?
QA &
Dr. Reza Ehsani
Dr. Reza Ehsani is an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida.
A: HLB [Huanglongbing] is a devastating bacterial disease of citrus trees. The bacteria are transmitted by a psyllid vector from infected trees to healthy trees. The disease has spread all over the citrus growing regions of Florida and, so far, no cure for this disease has been found. Early detection and controlling the psyllid is the suggested technique for managing the disease at the early stage of infection. Unfortunately, in Florida the disease has spread so much that early detection has very little value for the growers, because they know a large number of their trees have already been infected with HLB.
Q: How could small unmanned aircraft be useful in fighting crop disease? A: Current techniques for detecting disease and stress in many crops rely on human scouting, which is time consuming, expensive and, in some cases, is impractical or prone to human error. Low-altitude, high-resolution, aerial imaging using a small unmanned aerial system can potentially be used for stress detection for different crops. It can also help with detection of new diseases at early stage. Usually, it is a lot easier and less costly to control the disease at an early stage; therefore, early detection is critical.
Q: What testing with UAS have far, and what were the results?
you done so
A: We have used UAS for detecting HLB-infected citrus trees, and we showed that UAS can provide higher detection accuracy when compared with aerial images that were obtained with a manned airplane. Images that we took with UAS had an accuracy of one-inch resolution compared to a 24-inch resolution that we got from aerial images obtained from a manned airplane. We think the higher resolution contributes significantly to higher accuracy of detecting the disease. In addition to crop stress detection, we also have several ongoing projects in which we are using UAS for applications in crop inventory and yield estimation.
Q: What are the main advantages these systems have over manned aircraft? A: There are three main advantages. The first advantage is the cost. Collecting images and data are less costly by UAS due to overall lower costs of aircraft
Q&A
and other costs like operational and maintenance costs. Also, in some remote locations or countries there is no airport nearby and UAS would be the only choice. The second advantage is timeliness. UAS have the ability to fly and capture images on short notice or during short windows of opportunity. This is particularly important for applications in agriculture in which, often, timeliness in collecting images is critical for certain applications. The third advantage is the ability to collect high-resolution aerial images by flying at a lower altitude, which results in higher resolution data or images.
Q: Have
you talked to farmers and growers
about these systems, and what is their general response?
ond issue is that currently, there are very limited choices of sensors and imaging cameras on the market that can be used with UAS. The last one is the need for tools and techniques for data interpretation. I assume all these issues can be addressed if UAS can be legally used for commercial uses and companies see opportunities and a market for products in this area.
Q: Are
there any technical challenges that
need to be overcome before such systems could see widespread use?
A: I think one of the greatest challenges will be how to operate UAS in a safe manner and coexist with manned aircraft in a common airspace.
A: The majority of the growers that I talked to are very excited about this technology and cannot wait to utilize this technology in their operation. The last time that I saw so much excitement in growers about a new technology was when auto-steering technology for tractors and combines was introduced to the market. Of course, farming is a business, and like other businesses, growers will only invest in a new technology if it pays for itself and helps them with their bottom line. In that regard, researchers and scientists need to develop methods, tools and techniques that can convert the data that are collected by UAS systems into useful information that help growers to make better management decisions. This is not easy, because needs and requirements for aerial imaging are quite different from crop to crop or commodity to commodity. For example, nursery growers might be more interested to use aerial imaging for inventory management, while disease and stress detection might be more important for row crop growers.
Q: Do you foresee unmanned ground systems as having a place in precision agriculture as well? A: Yes, remote sensing in general has always been considered as one of the main components of precision agriculture; however, it has not been cost effective for growers to use it as a part of their precision agriculture practices.
Q: What
are the main hurdles to using this
technology?
A: The most immediate hurdle is current rules and regulations with respect to use of this technology. Growers cannot use this technology unless the FAA opens the national airspace for commercial use of UAS. The sec-
Dr. Reza Ehsani, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida.
Q: Looking ahead 10 to 20 years, what role do you see unmanned systems playing in the agriculture market? A: I believe UAS will be one of the major tools in the future production system that can be used from crop monitoring to variable rate and target specific application of crop inputs. They can be the farmers’ eye in the sky that can monitor everything that is going on in the field, including even the operation of ground-based equipment. Autonomous tractors and robots along with the wireless sensor network will be the other two technologies that can complement UAS, and the three of them will be the major future technologies in precision agriculture.
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Planting the Seeds of Automation Machinery has been making its way into agriculture since the Industrial Revolution, and now robotics are getting into the game. This timeline explores the history of machinery entering the fields and shows how this change has allowed farmers to be more efficient.
1854
1842 The first grain elevator is used in Buffalo, N.Y.
1945-1955 The use of herbicides and pesticides increased to lower labor and raise yields, which in turn allowed food prices to drop.
The self-governing windmill was completed by Daniel Halladay.
1892 The first gas tractor was created by John Froelich.
1850-1875
1845-1870 The transition from the use of horses to the use of tractors combined with new technological practices to fuel the second American agricultural revolution. A key implication of the second revolution was the reduction in the amount of people needed to run farms.
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A transition from hand power to the use of horses marked a key step in the American agricultural revolution. Threshing became mechanized in 1850, and wheat harvesting moved from small grain reapers to corn binders by the 1870s.
1926 The cotton-stripper with a sled box was created for the high plains, lowering harvest costs. Light tractors were also developed.
TIMELINE 1959
2002
The mechanical tomato harvester evolved. This harvester worked to cut the vines, lift them and separate the tomatoes from the vine. Tomatoes had to become resistant to damage from mechanical handling.
Following its 2002 debut, Yamaha’s industrial autonomous helicopter, RMAX, moved to dominate the unmanned crop spraying market in Japan.
2012 Harvest Automation’s HV-100 agriculture robot debuts. It performs spacing, collecting and consolidating functions and can follow a human.
2013
1994
AUVSI released “The Economic Impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the United States” report, which showed that in the first three years of integration, more than 70,000 jobs will be created in the United States with a $13.6 billion economic impact. Most of them will come in the precision agriculture sector.
Satellite technology began to allow farmers to track and plan their practices. This technology opened up data retrieval for agricultural and crop assessment, crop health, change detection, environmental analysis, irrigated landscape mapping, yield determination and soil analysis.
1990s The use of information technology and precision techniques became prevalent in agricultural practices. Precision techniques designated inputs into certain croplands and used the technology in remote sensing, geographic information systems, positioning systems and process control.
2011 John Deere introduces the R-Gator, a dual-purpose UGV, and also debuted Machine Sync, which can provide specifics to a farmer on equipment location and operational status and can automatically direct equipment.
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Flying High in the Heartland K-State Gets Into the Weeds of Ag Research With UAS By Danielle Lucey
T
hey say if you eat, you’re involved in ag. So UAS affecting ag indirectly affects everyone.”
Mark Blanks came to Kansas State University to stand up a new UAS program after running a similar program at Middle Tennessee State University. Now his relatively new program is helping take a modern technology and apply it to a field the university has been studying for more than a century. While the university has had a thriving agronomy research arm since 1909, K-State has only been home to an unmanned aircraft systems program since 2009.
its 15,000-foot runway. The UAS program has a standalone building with its own lab facilities, clean room for electronics, a classroom and a simulation room. Many of the students majoring in UAS are double majors, and whichever major they sign up for first is how they are counted in the university’s system. Because the UAS program is only two and a half years old, the majority of students selected another major first, so counting the participants is difficult. But Blanks says in the span of a year he has around 100 students come through the classes, ranging from students that eventually want to be operators to people with an interest in unmanned aircraft. “We’re not as big as the other schools, but we have pretty full classes, especially in the lower level, freshman, sophomore-level courses.” Blanks started his program in Salina through funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. “That was primarily focused on disaster response … in Kansas. Part of disaster response is ag related,” says Blanks. “What is damage to the crops? What is impact on the food supply?”
K-State’s Deon van der Merwe and Kevin Price discuss the school’s modified Zephyr RC aircraft with local media. All photos by AUVSI.
K-State’s unmanned aviation capabilities span two of its campuses, both the main campus in Manhattan, which has about 25,000 students, and the Salina campus, which sits about an hour southwest. This smaller, 800-student campus houses the school’s College of Technology and Aviation. “We are a pretty small campus, but we are heavily aviation focused,” says Blanks. His background is in aircraft certification, with an undergraduate degree in aircraft maintenance and management and a master’s in aviation systems. The facility sits on an old Air Force base. The college flies a fleet of both manned and unmanned aircraft off
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Around this same time, Manhattan-based agronomy Prof. Kevin Price was also using unmanned platforms for his agriculture research. “What basically happened was there was simultaneous research going on,” says Blanks. “There was growth in UAS, and there was growth in ag with UAS. … Both of us were doing UAS stuff and didn’t really know it. … We didn’t link up and start heavily growing the ag side until two years ago. So it took two or three years to get it all coordinated. It’s mostly about connecting the dots on who is doing different stuff and working together.” Price’s focus is more on technical research, says Blanks, while he is focusing on measuring the economic and time savings possible through unmanned aircraft. Price’s background is in using satellite imagery for observing agriculture, but a student approached him and asked if they could start working with UAS instead.
K-State Salina’s Penguin B, in a field at Crisis City.
“The interesting thing is I’ve been at K-State since 2008, and I could not get the agronomists very excited about using land sat imagery, because they couldn’t see their plants,” says Price. “But once I start showing them some of the imagery we’re getting from the unmanned aircraft systems, it completely changed their feelings about using imagery for studying plants and their crops, because now they can see the individual plants and see them in great, great detail.” Price uses his own unmanned aircraft in Manhattan, because he said it became clear that it wasn’t feasible to ask people from the Salina campus to come up every time they needed to fly.
Salina’s UAS Fleet The program has an array of UAS to choose from for different missions. The Salina campus predominantly uses its two Zephyr remote controlled aircraft in a delta wing configuration. The hand-thrown, battery-powered aircraft are outfitted with point-and-shoot cameras. They can cover between 800 and 1,000 acres in an hour. “You can take it to any field, any farm, anywhere and launch it and just land it back there right in front of you,” says Blanks. The university is currently adapting its third Zephyr, which is based on the hobbyist Zephyr platform from Arizona-based RiteWingRC. The school also has two Penguin Bs, which they use as a trainer aircraft. Blanks says the aircraft, built by Latvia-
based UAV Factory, are attractive because they can be outfitted with many different payloads. “The problem with the Penguin is it’s a little more involved to launch and recover. It requires a runway,” he says. The school also has three multicopters on hand for ag research, two DJI S800 Hexacopters, mostly used by Price in Manhattan, and an Aeryon Scout the Salina students recently configured. On top of that, the school owns around a dozen more UAS used for research other than agriculture, estimates Blanks. The main campus has a flight simulator Price uses to train students and “get all the crashes out of their system” before moving onto real-world flying. His students are all members of the local Academy of Modeling Aeronautics chapter and some are also members of the local Rice County Radio Control Flyers club. The Manhattan campus primarily flies the Zephyrs, though they also have smaller multicopters. Price says the fixed-wing aircraft work out well in Kansas, which often has high winds. The school flies under about 10 to 12 certificates of authorization granted by the Federal Aviation Administration, says Blanks, most of which cover an area just west of the Salina campus called Crisis City. Similar to Texas A&M’s Disaster City, it’s a public safety training area. They also have COAs over the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Weapon Range 10 miles west of Salina. The remainder of their flight areas are closer to the Manhattan campus. Mission Critical
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Blanks says it helps that when they apply, they are using the same few platforms in multiple locations, instead of new aircraft for each COA. Flying in an area that is sparsely populated also helps the approval process. “Its all about relationship in my opinion, building that relationship and trust with the FAA,” he says. Because of this, Blanks says three-quarters of the time, K-State’s COAs are approved faster than the FAA’s 60day limit. “We’ve been through the ringer enough times, we’ve got it down pat. Now getting a COA is just kind of going to the bank,” he says. “Not really, but it’s gotten to the point where we understand what the FAA wants and areas that they’re sensitive, so we stay away from those topics. If we’re doing ag stuff, we usually want to fly pretty low too. We don’t have a reason to be up at 5,000 feet flying around, which causes a lot more hazard with other aircraft.”
Ag Research K-State has a long list of research topics in ag, including precision agriculture, detection of insect damage, detection of herbicide overspray and mapping. But this summer, Blanks is focusing his time on a new project he says he’s never seen done — an economic impact comparison between using satellite imagery versus UAS to monitor a large-scale farm operation. “We’ll compare the traditional method of satellite data where they normally base decisions on — how to plant, how to fertilize, everything else — with satellite data. And we’ll do other fields using UAS and compare the two and see which one is more beneficial economically.” The study will look at the entire growing season for the comparison, which stretches beyond press time. Blanks, says, however, “I fully expect us to be far more accurate.” Blanks says despite a lot of chatter about agriculture with UAS outweighing the traditional alternative, he’s yet to see something as concrete as this study. “It’s something I haven’t seen yet. I’ve seen a lot of projections about how it’s going to help farmers. And we know it’s good, but I haven’t seen any concrete economic research on it anyway saying, this is the savings, this is the benefit, this is why you should buy UAS,” he says. “We’ve seen a whole lot of anecdotal evidence, but not a lot of solid, thoroughly sound research.” It’s this practical application aspect that Blanks says sets K-State’s UAS program apart. “There’s a lot of people that want to do applied, but 20
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K-State’s Mark Blanks outlines the attributes of the Aeryon Scout.
we’re 100 percent applied research. How do we use this in the field? How do we get this into the hands of the farmer? How do we commercialize it? And we have that capability with restricted airspace that very few people have where you can go fly and prototype and test things that may not be safe to do in the general airspace.” When it comes to applying UAS to ag research, Blanks says he often discusses with others what the business model will look like. “I think our opinion has been that the agronimist is the best person to utilize [the UAS], because the agronomist provides a service to a number of different farmers, and the agronomist would know how to handle the data as well.” However, Blanks sees the benefit in farmers owning cheaper systems without all the sensor suites and capabilities for simple inspections. Price concurs that the lion’s share of UAS sales will not be to the farmers themselves. “I think one of the biggest mistakes that many people who are going to try to sell this will make is that they’re going to assume the farmer’s their client. That, I’m almost certain, will be a good way to go bankrupt,” he says. “The farmer is usually too dang tired. They’ve been sitting on a tractor all day. Most of them don’t know any-
thing about image processing. They’re certainly not ignorant. They’re just not trained as digital image processors. If they were trained in that, they probably wouldn’t be a farmer, right? They want to be a farmer. They don’t want to be a remote sensor. “So the people that are going to really benefit from this technology are the people in the service providers, such as the crop scouts, and the fertilizer companies, and the pesticide companies, and the wheat control people and so on. Those are the ones that are going to be providing the service to the farmer,” he says. “If you go out and you think that you’re going to sell a bunch of planes to farmers, you’ll sell a few, but it’s going to be the service providers that are going to be most interested in this.”
Price also says he has so many areas of research he could use UAS in that he’s overwhelmed. “This is such a new area that we have not even begun to explore all the applications. It’s so new to many of us that we’re having to completely write software that will even handle the UAV imagery.” One of the big areas of research is called high-throughput phenotyping. Price says a big bottleneck in genetic crop research is the time it takes to properly identify crossbred-plants that were mated to result in desirable traits. After plants are crossbred, the farmer has to determine which of the offspring most strongly inherited those traits. Currently, that’s done by walking around a field and eyeing the plots. “To assess one single trait, like in winter wheat, can take up to 1,500 hours … to just go out and walk through the field and say, does this cross have this trait?” says Price. Now Price is working on a project that would use a spectral radiometer that flies on a UAS to search for those desirable traits. He’s already used that sensor to perform some research but has yet to attach one to an unmanned aircraft.
Inside the K-State ground control trailer.
However, Price believes farmers are excited by the prospect of UAS coming to their fields. At a recent high-tech agriculture conference, he spoke during the dinner slot. He said he was sure the attendees would be too tired to listen after a long day at the event. He went on at 7:30 to discuss his UAS work, and the president of the society had to force the session to end at 10:15 at night. “At least half a dozen farmers were ready to buy a UAV on the spot,” he says. A real issue for entry right now, aside from airspace access, says Blanks, is the high price of many of these military-grown systems. “There is no way we can have $50[,000], $100,000 systems being used by the average person for ag purposes,” he says. “That’s one of the things I’d like to see addressed more, keeping the cost down, reducing the barriers to entry. These are not the defense systems. These are commercial. … Get people away from the idea of using million-dollar systems for ag. What can we do for $500?”
The spectral radiometer measures the amount of light that comes off a plant in more than 2,000 wavelengths. By measuring these wavelengths, breeders can tell the phenotype traits of plants with 85 percent accuracy. Price says this means he could affix these radiometers to a UAS, fly over a field, computer analyze the data within minutes and know which plant crosses can be used. He’s also working on another project that would use UAS to aid in determining which crops need how much fertilizer by searching for nitrogen levels. Then the data from the UAS would be fed to precision agriculture applicators that would place the proper amount of nitrogen into the ground. Using UAS for applications like precision agriculture will change the whole landscape of farming, says Price, and could translate over into huge savings. “What it’s going to do is it’s going to give farmers, or the people who advise farmers, a whole new view of what’s going on in the field that they have not had before. … ” he says. “When you’ve got thousands of acres, you cannot walk it all. You miss a lot of stuff. Just a 1 percent improvement in productivity turns into billions of dollars in savings across the country.” Danielle Lucey is managing editor of Mission Critical.
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Harvesting Concepts Kinze System Coming to Fruition
C
ompanies have been racking up the miles testing their autonomous farming solutions, and this coming year may see many of them move into farmers’ fields. Kinze Manufacturing, of Monmouth, Ill., has been working on components to make an autonomous grain harvester for five years. Called the Autonomous Harvest System, the company has spent the last year honing the technology, which includes a tractor, a combine and the grain harvester. The tractor drives behind the combine, keeping a safe distance, ready to catch the grain harvested.
Kinze performs all its testing at its own test fields, where the majority of the AHS’ testing has happened. “It would have been impossible to maintain our development schedule if we didn’t have that resource,” Schildroth says. The company defined all the uses for the system to build in the level of automation needed for those tasks. “The process started with defining the customer use cases that we wanted to tackle,” he says. “We then progressed to the system design, and that set the stage for the detailed software and component development. This project had a much larger software aspect to it than the typical Kinze project.”
The operator of the system uses a tablet to tasks the AHS with commands like “park” or “unload.” The system uses GPS, inertial measurement units, This approach translated lidar, radar and vision over when the company systems to keep the operawanted to apply metrics to tor informed. The system its tests. also has safety features in“We’ve developed a detailed tegrated, like a handheld Kinze’s Autonomous Harvest System being tested in fall 2012. All photos courtesy Kinze Manufacturing. test plan of anticipated use emergency stop button, cases and scenarios,” says and the vehicle will automatically come to a stop if it senses an obstacle in its way. Schildroth. “The tests have pass/fail criteria that must be met for approval. Additionally, we put hours on the In fall of 2012, the company had farmers test the syssystem in what we call ad-hoc testing. This is testing tem, which could be coming to the market by the end by individuals with farming experience that are using of the year. the system just as they would on their own farm. The “Three farm operations used the system last fall. The re- ad-hoc testing can find gaps in your test plan that you sults exceeded our expectations,” said Rhett Schildroth, didn’t anticipate.” Kinze product manager, in an email with Mission CritiThe system is designed to work the same exact way every cal. “One of the concerns we had was how long it would time, says Schildroth. Farmers can make adjustments to take for the farmers to learn how to use the system, but optimize their use of the system. that didn’t turn out to be an issue at all. Within hours they were proficient with it. It was interesting to watch “For instance, one operator knew it took 15 seconds for how they adopted their own routine to maximize the the autonomous unit to get from the offloading point at the edge of the field to where he was,” he says. “So when overall harvest efficiency.”
To see how Kinze’s AHS works, click or scan this QR code with your smartphone.
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Testing, Testing
he called the machine, he could wait to call it until 15 seconds before he needed it to be there. This saved the system from having to follow the combine around in the field until it was needed.” Kinze initially attempted to get help from software interface experts to help with the system automation, but ended up using the company’s own team to create the interface after the first attempt didn’t yield anything the company could use. After that, the company “hit the nail on the head right away,” says Schildroth. “During training, the farmers became proficient in utilizing the system almost immediately so that was our validation,” he says. “We were looking for areas that the farmers struggled to learn with the idea that we would then address them with an improved user interface, but there really wasn’t any trouble spots.” Since the completion of these tests, Kinze has been carefully rolling out a select number of autonomous harvesters.
The tractor autonomously follows the grain harvester, following commands from an operator relayed via a tablet.
“The systems are being leased at the start to maintain control of the product,” says Schildroth. “While we’ve had a very positive experience to date, this technology is so new that we want to take a cautious approach.”
GuideConnect Brings Platooning to the Fields European company Fendt is working on its GuideConnect system, a prototype that would also use a pair of vehicles to perform autonomous farming tasks. Two tractors are linked together in a leader-follower format, with a driver in the lead vehicle so that twice the farming tasks can be accomplished with one operator.
Fendt’s GuideConnect system. Photo courtesy Fendt.
GuideConnect uses realtime kinematic and GPS satellite navigation and radio communications to keep the vehicles connected at a 9-meter distance. The company has been working on the systems for a few years now; the
system won one of the two gold medals issued at Agritechnica 2011 for innovative farming solutions. “Both vehicles communicate wirelessly and are controlled by a highly accurate GPS steering system. The driver of the guiding tractor monitors both machines and can access the complete operating interface of the following machine. Having two tractors working at the same time significantly increases operator productivity. In contrast to a large machine with similar capability, two smaller tractors can be used more flexibly and cause less soil compaction,” the conference judges said in a statement. The project is being funded through the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food with Fendt’s parent company, AGCO, and partners geo-konzept GmbH and the Mobima Institute of Mobile Machines at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology. It is currently unclear if the system concept will ever reach the North American market, but Germany’s Agrar Heute reports that this year a rental version of the system will be available on the German market, outfitted on Fendt’s 360-horsepower 900 Vario tractors.
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Oregon Researchers Study Spuds With Unmanned Aircraft By Ashley Addington and Holly Gonzalez
O
regon State University is bringing high tech to potato fields.
Don Horneck, an extension agronomist professor from Oregon State University, recently teamed with Boeing to conduct a research project using unmanned aircraft systems to monitor potato crops. Potatoes are a major crop grown in the Midwest. They’re obviously popular but also can be difficult to grow, as they suffer from blights, bacteria and other stressors. “They are one of the most expensive types of crops to grow, rounding out at $500,000 for an average crop cycle,” Horneck said. Besides being expensive, potatoes easily hide stressors while growing. They have tendencies to develop blemishes and become infested with insects and other diseases. Scientists are finding ways to monitor plant growth on farms by using unmanned systems that are capable of reaching and observing plants in ways older farming tools can’t. Alhough UAS are not yet available for commercial usage, the industry is hoping to see a breakthrough in the agricultural department. Like any other helpful tool, researchers are hoping that unmanned systems will be able to improve the future and industry of agriculture. New advancements have been created to help in the areas of irrigation, fertilization
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The electrical Tetracam Hawkeye uses zoom to capture various wavelengths for Oregon State’s study of potato crop growth. Photo courtesy Oregon State University Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center.
and observation of crops for farmers. These simple yet crucial improvements can save the industry thousands of dollars every year. Technology has been introduced to detect parasites, dehydration in plants and other barriers to growth. With ever-continuing advancements, researchers like Horneck are now incorporating unmanned aircraft into their work.
which monitors OSU’s land, and Procerus Technologies’ Unicorn delta wing aircraft, which monitors a private farm. Both UAS are small and battery powered. The UAS use cameras with zoom capability to perform scans three times a week.
Oregon State Project
“You can fly the UAVs low enough that you can get one-millimeter resolution and you can actually look at an individual leaf in the field,” Horneck says.
Boeing contacted Oregon State last fall to expand the use of UAS for agricultural studies, and the company leased aircraft to the school. The UAS used were Tetracam’s Hawkeye parachute/parasail,
With this kind of precision, researchers at Oregon State are examining potato crops by stressing the crop for nitrogen and water content. The examination aims to understand how quickly unmanned
Spotlight
aircraft can detect deficiencies and other issues in the crops. To stress for water, a programmable pivot tested rates of 60, 80 and 100 percent of water. To stress for nitrogen, levels were tested at 100, 200, 300 and 400 pounds of nitrogen. For this project, the UAS are licensed to fly at 500 feet on OSU’s seven-acre field. This allows better resolution in imaging. To save time, recognition software is used to examine the land. “We have recognition software that can show we have a bug on a plant with GPS coordinates. We can look specifically at that plant on the screen. Then you can ground truth it, and hopefully the whole system works to make agriculture more efficient,” Horneck says.
Ground truthing is a process where technicians go out into the field to take calibrations, measurements, observations and samples to be compared against images from recognition software. The verification provided by ground truthing allows data to be more accurate and allows for the creation of a better crop. “Less cost, higher production which is more sustainable, is always the goal,” Horneck says.
Future Hopes Oregon State’s research has great promise for the future, especially in a world needing to be fed with a declining farm base. Some farms are already using infrared and color photos to look for sprinkler
packaging and disease infection. “This has the possibility to be the next step. It’s basically a way of scouting your fields and getting ahead of things before they become issues,” Horneck says. Oregon State researchers already plan to examine crops at closer range, flying over at only 100 to 200 feet. It is even possible that one day a sprayer could be attached to a UAS to target individual leaves that are infected. The overall goal is “to make potato production and agriculture more sustainable every day,” Horneck says. Ashley Addison and Holly Gonzalez are interns at AUVSI.
Increasinghumanpotential.org promotes the use of unmanned systems and robotics in the following categories: • By Land, Air and Sea
• Helping the Environment
• Jobs and Economy
• Fostering Education and Learning
• Enhancing Public Safety
• Increasing Efficiency in Agriculture
• Mitigating and Monitoring Disasters
• FAA Flight Restrictions
Discover the Endless Benefits of Unmanned Systems Mission Critical
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Back by popular demand, the leading European conference focused on RPAS challenges, advancements and opportunities is coming to you in October. Brought to you by AUVSI, the world’s largest non-profit association representing the global unmanned systems and robotics community, AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Europe 2013 will be the premier RPAS event in Europe to learn from a renowned lineup of speakers and to network with leaders in the industry.
Our strong lineup of speakers representing international regulatory agencies, as well as civil and commercial RPAS end users include: FRANK BRENNER, director general, EUROCONTROL PETER BOMBAY, deputy head of unit – aviation safety (E3), European Commission ABDOULAYE N’DIAYE, secretary general, EUROCAE MAURICE LABONDE, Air Traffic Management Section, ICAO FILIPPO TOMASELLO, ATM/airport safety officer, EASA JIM WILLIAMS, manager, UAS Integration Office, FAA (Invited) MARGARET JENNY, president, RTCA RON VAN DE LEIJGRAAF, chairman, JARUS MIKE LISSONE, UAS ATM integration manager, EUROCONTROL LT COL. EDGAR REUBER, Civil-Military Division, EUROCONTROL/ NATO FINAS GERRY CORBETT, directorate of airspace policy, CAA UK MICHAEL STANDAR, chief, Strategies and External Relations, SESAR Joint Undertaking ALFREDO ROMA, AST Legal
For more detailed program and registration information, visit www.auvsi.org/USE.
The University of New South Wales’ autonomous tractor technology could increase farmable land by 20 percent. All photos courtesy Jay Katupitiya.
From Farmers to Intelligent Pilots
A
sk anyone to describe how farmland looks, and people will give you a common answer — rows upon rows of crops tended to by farmers on tractors. But a technology out of the University of New South Wales, Australia, may turn that image on its head. Associate Prof. Jay Katupitiya is working with the Grains and Research Development Corp. on a proj-
ect that will use a smaller autonomous platform for working the land, which will increase the harvestable area for farmers by about 20 percent. This large increase in area is possible because of the vehicle’s size and accuracy. The “intelligent pilot vehicle,” as Katupitiya calls it, has smaller wheels than a traditional tractor, meaning the compressed areas created by the tractor’s wheels could be much smaller. Mission Critical
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End Users
The system also can lay seeds within 2 centimeters’ acuracy. This precision is unprecedented, says Katupitiya. “ … Nothing will grow on the tracks of the tractor, and this restricts the farmers to drive the tractors over and over again along the same tracks,” says Katupitiya, in an email with Mission Critical. “If they wish to change the orientation of crop layout, they can’t.” “High precision in planting ensures the certainty in our knowledge as to where the crop has been planted,” he says. “This will also tell us where the crop is not planted. This way we have a database that can be repeatedly used, provided our travel in the paddock is precise enough to, for example, to use the cropped locations for fertilizing and pesticide spraying and free areas for vehicle traversing or to eradicate anything that grows in free areas. … The precision completely eliminates the need to sense where the crop is — a significant reduction in cost.”
pitiya. “In our seeder, the wheels are driven under force control. That is, the seeder wheels can be commanded by the pilot vehicles to exert a certain drive force. The seeder wheels can also be steered so that path-tracking precision can be maintained.” The vehicle is loaded with advanced sensors, and a farmer can control the platform via a navigation software. The software can also relay commands to the seeing implement.
Katupitiya’s background is not in agriculture; he has a Ph.D. in robotics and specializes in computer vision to track objects moving in space. But Katupitiya says agriculture is a perfect application for robotic technology. “Robotics can be applied to many scenarios, among these are defense, mining and agriculture,” he says. “They are challenging outdoor scenarios. I chose agriculture, as broad-acre farming offer[s] substantially structured fields, where application of [a] robotic solution can get to commercialization sooner.” UNSW’s research could be a game changer for farmers around the world, enough so that the team working on the project placed as finalists in the 2012 Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology. “Traditionally the tractors do two things,” says Katupitiya. “They provide guidance to the implements, and at the same time [they provide] propulsion or pulling power. This makes the current tractors not just large, but huge. As such they are expensive, and if they break down the entire operation comes to a halt.” Typical tractors are powerhouses, pulling farming implements along the land. UNSW’s work puts some of that propulsion power in the implement itself, allowing the tractor to shrink and decrease its footprint on a field. The implement “is designed in such a manner that it incorporates advanced control systems and can respond to all the commands from the pilot vehicle,” says Katu-
UNSW’s concept shrinks down the tractor and puts some of the propulsion power in the farming implement, which precisely places seeds on the ground.
Katupitiya says the pilot vehicle works best for broadacre crops, like wheat, grass, barley and canola. Though he says the cost of using the autonomous vehicle is comparable to traditional tractors, Katupitiya says there will be resulting labor cost changes, and farmers would no longer have to have climate-controlled cabins in large tractors — a big-ticket item. “The autonomous machines will not need operators, hence the lack of precision and limited work hours or the need for shift workers can be eliminated,” he says. “These machines can operate around the clock, even in complete darkness. Hence, tighter scheduling within narrower operational windows, such as seeding time frame, can be significantly relaxed.” The research team at New South Wales is currently working with some end users — a group of Australian farmers — to further develop their project. “There is considerable interest in the work,” says Katupitiya.
To see a detailed video of the autonomous seeder in action, click this QR code.
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