Unmanned Sprayers - Part Two

Unmanned Sprayers - Part Two

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

Will fully autonomous sprayers be the standard for orchard crops in the future? GUSS, which stands for Global Unmanned Spray Systems, is a California-based company who are already selling these units along the west coast and in Florida. COO Gary Thompson said the idea was born out of a custom spraying business that needed to solve for their own labor challenges.

Thompson… “Dave Crinklaw, he's the founder of the business. He started a commercial spraying outfit here in California back in 1982. Being in that business as long as he has, he grew up very large and labor just really, really started taking its toll, the challenges there. He had had this idea about a driverless sprayer for quite some time. And then in 2014, he finally decided to start building it. All he kept being told over and over by anyone he'd ask is it can't be done in orchards because of the GPS problem. Well, Dave didn't take too well to that answer. So he's decided, you know what, I gotta build a machine. I gotta start with a platform. So he just started building the platform and then set off on the course of about a three and a half year process of figuring out how to make it drive down a row, make a turn and come back to him.”

Initially built for their own custom spraying service, GUSS started making the machines for growers who wanted the technology for themselves.

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