UC Davis investigates using helicopter drones for crop dusting
Researchers at University of California, Davis, in cooperation with the Yamaha Motor Corporation, are testing UAV crop dusting on the Oakville Experimental Vineyard at the UC Oakville Station using a Yamaha RMax remote-controlled helicopter. The purpose is to study the adaptation of Japanese UAV crop dusting techniques for US agriculture, but not all the hurdles they face are technological.
The use of aircraft for crop dusting and seeding is over a century old, but it’s not a panacea. Flying aircraft low over farmland is best suited for areas like the Great Plains of North America, which are flat and relatively free of obstacles like trees or power lines. In built-up areas, rugged terrain, or mixed-use regions, it isn't feasible to distribute chemicals from a plane or helicopter and even under ideal conditions, flying close to the ground can be hazardous. There’s also the risk of the pilot and people on the ground being exposed to dangerous chemicals.
If you wanted to find a place not suited to crop dusting, it would be hard to beat Japan. It’s a mountainous, heavily populated country with lots of trees and buildings where farms with small fields are interspersed closely with settlements and all manner of other things like a semi-rural crazy quilt. But it’s also a country with an aging population providing fewer young people to work the land, so there’s a strong imperative to automate as much as possible.
The idea of using drones as crop dusters and seeders may be a novelty in the West, but in Japan it’s old news. Unmanned helicopters have been on the job for over 20 years since Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture started promoting the idea in the 1980s. In 1991, small remote-controlled helicopters were used to spray rice fields and today UAVs spray 40 percent of the nation’s rice crops. In addition, unmanned helicopters are used to spray, wheat, oats, soybeans, lotus roots, daikon radishes, chestnut groves and continues to expand to other kinds of orchards and vegetable fields.
http://www.gizmag.com/uav-crop-dusting/27974/
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