 Hi, I'm Mark Hall with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System here with the Ohio State University's Precision Ag Specialist, Dr. John Fulton. John, drones, UAVs, systems, how does the word system fit in there now, but boy, prices drop down. You can get a good drone package for less than $1,500. If not $300 or $400 today, even with the camera, it's amazing, and it's been a hot topic here for the last five years, kind of flashed on the market. We do have some regulations. As a farmer or someone supporting farmers, you've got to consider, and so you can find all that on the FAA website. It's a lot easier to fly legally today than it was a year ago, but it's exciting. We were talking about there's potential that they can be used as an effective tool to scout, collect some data, and I think in long term as we see some of this, and we'll show some examples today, they might be used for other things like actually collecting samples of leaves, water sampling, really getting, you know, there's just a spraying, you know, doing some things that humans normally may have to do manually that they're potentially could replace some of this scouting and some of these type activities. John throughout our Precision Ag series, we've talked about data and big data, but you get the drones, and particularly fixed wing or, man, data is, there is just terabytes or I don't know all the big words. We agree to make in-season decisions and do things, you know, action things. I've got to go spray or do something, and that's going to be the critical thing in my book or smart scout. Yes. You know, I think that's going to be an important thing. So let's talk about drones in this lesson here, Mark. There's a lot of different ones out there today, and the market itself, I mean, Amazon doesn't sell thousands per month, it sells tens of thousands of these things per month. The consumers around the world, there's a lot of different makes. There's fixed wings. There's copters. There's large capacity ones. There's these little copters that can carry a camera. I mean, there's a lot of different orientations, and what I mean by that is, you know, the number of propellers or how they're made and what they can accomplish out there. And so a lot of the different ones out there that are commercially available, and I think we're going to see larger ones in the future that'll come out onto the market that people can take advantage of, they can have that higher capacity to maybe carry a tank or carry some mechanisms to do things out there in the field. I think for today's lesson, I think we're talking about UAVs or unmanned vehicles or UASs or SUASs is what the FAA calls them, and that's anything, any of them that's less than 55 pounds. There's two distinct classes that I would call it that farmers or agronomists have access to. There's the multi-rotor, and we can read down, you know, currently what some of the characteristics of those are. I think the important thing is a multi-rotor can hover, so I can set over a spot. And then there's the fixed swing, and these are typically a little bit more expensive, can fly longer, and can collect, you know, cover more acres per hour per se carrying specifically the cameras. But these two different classes, I mean, these are decisions, but if you're just out scouting probably a multi-rotor type scenario is going to work for you. You can hover, you can get it in position, and take the pictures, whereas a fixed wing I think is going to be more towards trying to collect and generate data layers over larger areas and things. And so, you know, just something to think about as you go out, if you're new to this and you're wanting to fly, I wouldn't encourage folks don't go spend a lot of money buy something that's pretty basic, get it comfortable with it, because the last thing I want you to do is go buy an expensive camera or put a camera on it, and you put it up and you crash and, you know, you're out a little bit of dollar or a little bit of money on the cameras. And so, as you get used to it, you're going to figure out how to take a, go cheap or go basic and then move up in terms of capacity and functionality that brings. So a lot of options out there today, Mark, on both ends. Today we're talking higher capacity today. This is just an example of a DJI 1000 actually can carry 15 pounds of payload. And so, when we think about the Amazons and Interwall March that are playing in this game of trying to deliver packages, I mean, you know, I can put a little bit bigger camera on or I could build in some sampling mechanisms on these that can't be handled with the smaller lighter. And so, you're just, again, we're starting to see this progression of new larger capacity UAVs coming on the market as well that we can think about. John, just a dream, just a perfect world kind of situation would be to have a UAV that had a camera that knew how to recognize a specific insect or specific weed and could fly and just treat the spot. And you know, with the cameras today, I mean, we think about our smartphones and the quality of those cameras and think about mountain those on. You know, I don't want to say that's right around the corner, Mark, but I mean, it's coming sooner than probably a lot of people think about. But with the size of the cameras, the quality of cameras and image processing and analysis that you can do on board, those type of scenarios are becoming more real than where we were just five years ago. So you know, it's just let your mind wonder about how this might fit into an operation, farming operation. So that's kind of what we talked a little bit about. There's the rotors, they hover and you get your fixed wing. You're going to have to glide or stay in flight and fly longer and then you got the capacity or some considerations to make here. Borrowed this from one of our faculty here at Auburn University, but you know, just some facets that's up. You got your UAV itself. You got a sensor, in this case, a camera that can be built right in or mounted on that. That's right. You can buy it right with it. And again, very, very low cost to get a basic one. You can take your pictures over an area. In our case, with the new certification or part 107, you're limited really at 400 feet or below is what we're talking about. That's a lot. We can work with four or three. Plenty to do probably some of the things that we want to do. I typically don't have a controller, they got apps today that can communicate. I mean, I can watch the camera and switch between video and still picture mode, but I can get my self-position to take a picture. Of course, they got their GPS enabled already. That helps geofence it out of areas that they can't fly. And then I can download or upload new firmware or download pictures very quickly. And for the new systems today, they're pretty much autonomous, Mark. I mean, I can put waypoints out and once it lifts off, it goes and does its mission and returns and set it down and you're done. So we're to the autonomous stage on most of these or I can fly, at least on the rotors with the RC or the apps that are available. It's just amazing. John, I've got a simple quadcopter that I got off of Amazon and you just hit that Go Home button, it don't matter where it is, it just flies right in and lands where it took off. Yeah, it's just amazing, just amazing. This is an example on the left side. This is a fixed-wing flight plan that was put together again over a field and so you kind of geofence or what the area that you want to cover, you put that mission as uploaded to that, it takes off, it completes that autonomously on itself, collects the pictures in this case along the way, and then it comes back and lands all. We always say a successful flight is one that we never have to interrupt or even touch the bird at all. On the right side again, this is just an example on any of the rotors today that you just put out, in this case, five waymarks that takes off and it goes to number one, you tell at what height, take a picture, go to number two, take a picture, it can complete that, comes home and again, all autonomously, it's just amazing the navigation systems that today that are already built into these fairly cost-effective solutions. You know the other big thing, and I mean you got to kind of go through this is what cameras and then what imagery do you want to get out of this, I mean to me the value is the imagery. Well talk to us, big guy, for ag, what camera do we need for crop monitoring? Yeah, and so let's talk, I mean first of all do you want to take still shots, do you want an image or do you want video? Some of these cameras can do both, so there's a combination. I think for most of the folks in ag, they're using basically the camera functionality. And on the bottom there, just reading down the RGB, I can get visible pictures, I can get infrared cameras, I get a red edge camera, I get thermal cameras today, multi-spec and hyperspec, they're again more expensive as you go down and then there's some light arms that can be mounted on that give you elevation or DEM type data with that. If you were going to use your drone for irrigation monitoring, what camera would you use? Well when you say irrigation monitoring, I could use an RGB or visible camera and just fly up and down and check for leaks, plugs, things like that, do a quick check down with my visible. If I want to try and manage and make scheduling decisions and such, the thermal gives you stress plans versus non-stress and so having a thermal camera which is a little bit more expensive or something that gives me a combination of visible and infrared where I can do some calculated vegetative indices just to be able to notice some differences in that crop health out there. And so that's the nice thing, what I want to show on this is if I want to get like an NDVI map, a lot of people talk about NDVI, typically or at least in the past I'd have to fly a visible camera. What does NDVI stand for? Normalized Difference Vegetative Index and that's been utilized as a crop health crop figure measurement out there so but to do that NDVI image I need typically the red band out of the visible so I need a visible camera and then I need an infrared or camera as well. Today for example you look at those cameras up there, the red edge or the sequoia there, they actually can fly and give you both visible and infrared in case of sequoia so I can make one flight, I collect a lot of bands and not only can I get a visible out of it I can actually do a calculated NDVI measurement as an example Mark but what I guess I'm telling you here is the quality and with the capacity of these cameras are growing you can see the size of them but to put them on and I suspect that the cost of those are going to be greatly reduced in the next two or three years. So a lot of different cameras I hear what you're talking about but these are some of the common ones that are accessible out there, if you just want to go basic get you a GoPro and get you a visible one at least start looking at crops at a different perspective. This is just an example, we won't go through all this but again what are you trying to accomplish if you get into this data layering piece. Resolution is important, you can see the top left there is not as high as resolution as the one on the right or the bottom there, you just lose some of that detail but again it gives me green being healthier, more lush plants versus the red areas being not as healthy and probably smaller plants in this case when that was taken mid-summer but you know I also think if you're going to get into flying and you're trying to generate some of these images you probably want multiple images per year, you know going out and taking one snapshot can tell you a little bit but if you're kind of comparing it and kind of following a crop along the year it might not seem important that day but when you get to that yield map and you're trying to go back and look at what happened during the summer or during the growing season having those multiple images really can begin to help tell the story a lot of time. So just a resolution trying to collect multiple images over there and then deciding what kind of camera or what kind of information you want to get from it becomes pretty important but like I said you take that left image versus the right image mark a lot of different detail a lot of different detail and I would compare that on the left almost as your yield map because your yield monitor is not going to pick up some of the micro detail that's in that image so resolution becomes pretty important I think in the tour because a lot of that you see lines and I don't think that's mother nature making those lines out there and they're there and a yield monitor typically is not going to pick them up whereas the imagery can can expose some of the man-made issues that may be cropping up out here in this field. John I think we're at a point today that it's prudent for a farmer to have one of these at the back of his truck and when he gets out in the field in the growing season to just go up go up a hundred feet 200 feet take a quick look if there's something big bad happening out there take care of it and if not come back down to the next field. And we're going to show let's look at an example of this here's just again not probably an exhaustive list but just a list of uses for imagery I really think this smart scouting identifying areas we see a couple areas in that soybean crop I might want to go out and take a look at in this case it's probably herbicide damage as we found out but just identifying these and being able to be smarter in terms of your time going to the field I think becomes very important it's an efficiency thing you learn more and you're out there looking at these differences that are showing up in imagery but there's a lot of other things in terms of identifying stress identifying disease and other things fertility issues I mean there's and I think that list is just going to grow but just it's just a list for for everyone to kind of review and and these to me these I can give you an example of someone in at least the US that are using imagery for one of these items here right here. So going to your point here take your copter you throw it up this is down to Evie Smith through a couple of examples here from Auburn this is a corn crop but again it's about perspective because if I advance if I put that copter right down on the corn that's what we're looking at versus when I get up and you start to look at you know that's a lot different perspective and you know I might want to go look at that area a little bit closer and so like you say you take these copters and just take one picture and be able to learn from that and then again this you know I think about us looking from the end of the rows we're kind of seeing this perspective versus this perspective it's just a whole different world and different information different intel that you can learn about that field that may be of value to you as a as a farmer or as an agronomist is trying to scout just some just do this in I think different types of images not one image can be the tell all either but I like to see what how we're using I want to see that visible image on the left I like to see an NDVI at the same time and I like to see the thermal image and take this for example marking these images but if you notice an RGB and NDVI if you kind of take to see where the white line or where where it's kind of cut out between the two two projects if you look on the left there in a visible or NDVI you don't see much difference do you know but when you move over to thermal you can see some early instances of crop stress something going on there yeah and so again it's all the images help you explore and I always say that you may learn one thing out of one image but not the other but it's a combination and these again all flown at one time and exposing different things about that corn crop in this case that at least I know about it may you know I may action against it I may not but I think it's important to be able to it's a suite of images that helps tell the story and gives you the learning and potential information that we're trying to generate plug sprinkler going back you asked me about that here's uh here's just an NDVI map that was pulled out but you can clearly see that there may be some other issues out there in the field of course but in this case clearly we had a plug plug nozzle or sprinkler in this case on this pivot but you can pull that kind of stuff out blowing that image up that I was showing there but you can see in this case some compaction issues this was taken late july mark this is corn and the green the green NDVI values in this is much healthier much more yield potential at this stage than where the red the red is but you can still see some of those track marks that cause compaction and ultimately yield loss out there if I was going to tell you as an example again a yield map would never show you the kind of details some of this imagery can I mean because at different stages of growth absolutely but I tell you I think we're going to talk to our operators here a little bit about when we're getting out there and what we're doing because if you look at there's a vertical line in that bottom field that's where they right where the grain buggy went no that's actually where the sprayer went I just be lined it to go to the top but you know and if I got a project out there I might be thinking about how I need to harvest it to actually learn about the treatment and not bringing in the man made and the natural variability of what I'm trying to learn so just some thoughts on that just kind of thinking about future mark and and we'll bring this to an end you know we've got spatially in Japan this is the Yamaha chopper on the on the top left being spraying in a in this particular case of vineyard they've been testing this for a few years out in California well farmers are noticing that thing John they are paying attention yeah and so you know we've been testing there's a few at least one in the United States but in Japan they use them all the time but in the bottom right that's a commercially available I can you can go buy that thing the day under on the bottom right and so again as we think doing some of the spot spraying coupling the cameras I mean we're starting to see this trend come together and that you mentioned earlier so here's an example out of the University of Nebraska they've got basically test tubes on there and they've got essentially they can go out and take water samples and you know I think they can carry either two or three water samples they fly it out you go down in the water whatever depth it's set and collect water samples again think about having to go out in a boat or something that used to be able to do that and and do that more frequently and maybe you know and I mean these are just things that are coming down the pipe pretty quick beyond some of the scouting tools that people are starting to work on for wildlife for so many it's not we're thinking ag and we're talking precision ag but this is going to so many options wildlife water quality livestock range management yeah and the livestock producers you know getting up and checking checking their livestock and especially after a storm or um scenario you know a weather condition I mean if I can't get back there but I can I can put that up and go back there and check man gives me you know comp you know makes me feel good that hey everything's okay or hey I got it I got to deal with some issues so so that was kind of just bringing this to an end you know I think there's a lot of opportunities we're still growing in this this idea around using UAVs but as you mentioned I think smart scouting using some of the basic ones that don't cost a lot I think I get a different perspective as we're showing and might be telling uh to go check things or maybe I need to get my insurance agent out there so exciting times my friend exciting times thank you for watching our precision ag videos if you need help contact this guy right here he'll help you 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