Hylio drones

Hylio drones

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Arthur Erickson is Co-Founder of Hylio Agrodrones, a company that develops and manufactures agrodrones in the US. He and his co-founders came up with the idea of drone technology in college and ended up in the agriculture space for very practical reasons.

Farmers are facing increasingly complicated challenges. We don't know why exactly. Even that's up for debate, of course, but we're seeing hotter seasons than usual. We're seeing more moisture and more rain than usual in a lot of places. So when you have those kind of conditions, you're looking at more fungal pressure, for example, in corn and soybeans when you have more fungus and it's wet, very hard to service your crops with the traditional ground rig. It's getting stuck in the mud, especially in mid to late season. When the crop is higher too. You might not have a high enough clearance machine to actually get out there and treat your crops when it's most crucial for you to do so. So when you're facing these adverse conditions, you've got the most damage to your crops that you need to tackle. So the drones are great tools for going out there and they're not limited by 2D space.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimates that farms will eventually account for an 80% share of the commercial drone market. But now that the Pentagon has blacklisted China-based DJI Technology, one of the largest commercial drone producers, farmers considering or using spray drone technology could be impact.

 

While the Pentagon has not yet grounded DJI drones, it could happen as a next step after the blacklist. Since farmers receive government subsidies and FAA are required to operate agricultural spray drones, regulations of DJI drones will likely impact farmers. Would you be interested in speaking with a US agricultural drone expert about this issue and how farmers could be affected?

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