Drones Navigate the Wild Blue Yonder
American Robotics’ solution, Scout™, is the world’s first fully automated, practical drone system for agriculture, says company CEO and cofounder Reese Mozer. “Once installed, a user will never have to physically interact with the system to operate it”. A ruggedized base station houses embedded management software that handles all of the supporting tasks connected with flight, including mission planning, precision docking and recharging, data transfer, image processing and reporting.
“Something that often gets overlooked is how time-consuming and expensive it is to manually operate a drone in agriculture, especially on a constant and repetitive basis,” Mozer notes. “With this type of integrated technology, farmers have the power to survey and manage all their fields remotely and instantly at a very low cost.”
American Robotics was intrigued by the prospect of piloting its drone technology with WinField United. “We believe WinField United is a national leader in agriculture, with both comprehensive technology offerings and a broad network of retailers and field staff,” says Mozer. “We see many opportunities to partner with WinField United, both in technology and in research.”
Mozer believes the next frontier of precision agriculture will be enabled by the combination of fully-autonomous drones and much higher-resolution data and imagery. “Some people call this moving beyond just getting ‘pretty pictures,’” he says. “Delivering ultra-high-resolution data through an automated solution will enable our industry to make large strides in providing timely, actionable information, giving farmers on-demand information at the resolution quality they need to more accurately diagnose what’s occurring in their fields.”