2/29/2016 Drone Tech Winners and Losers At Precision Aerial Agriculture Show

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Drone Tech Winners and Losers at the Precision Aerial Ag Conference 2014

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Drone Tech Winners and Losers at the Precision Aerial Ag Conference 2014 Aerial Mapping

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Last week my colleague Mitch Solomon and I were privileged to be in the company of more than one thousand
farmers in rural Decatur, IL, for the two-day Precision Aerial Agriculture Show 2014 (PAAS 2014). Mitch covers five
key takeaways from the show in his post about the event including the most salient one: There is no killer drone
Aerial Surveillance
app for farmers rather, drones are a tool with many apps and high ROI. In this post, Ill give an accounting and
analysis of the players in attendance that are supporting the market for drones in agriculture. Some were present, Aerial Surveying
others were mentioned but werent present, and still others were surprisingly absent on all counts.
Best Practices
Bottom line
Camera Drone
Regardless of which vendors attended or exhibited, heres what you need to know with regard to the drones vendors
serving or intending to serve the agriculture market: Cool New Products

1. Most of the companies that serve this market are small businesses. It is clear they are working hard to learn Drone Delivery
firsthand what farmers want from small drones and in doing so are establishing networks of distributors and
service providers that will lock other players out of the market. Drone Ecosystem
2. Manufacturers of small drones for precision agriculture are consolidating around DJI and 3DRobotics for their
flight control and mission planning software mainly because of functional maturity and low-cost. Drone Inspections
3. The large aerospace companies and Department of Defense (DoD) contract vendors do not have a presence
in this market. Even though some have participated in agricultural academic studies, as a whole their Drone Regulations
products are unknown in the farming community. These vendors simply have not established the necessary
relationships with growers, dealers, coops, agronomists, and local service providers. As a result, its Drone Technology
probably too late for them to capture any significant U.S. agriculture market share.
First Responders
Present and Accounted For

Industry Trends
AgEagle AgEagle had the enviable booth position just inside the show floor, which made it hard to ignore. Its
purpose-built fixed-wing flyer with uTHERE flight controller and Canon S100 camera goes for about US $12,500. Its
Internet of Things
similar to in looks to a Ritewing Zephyr II, but has an epoxy hard shell that makes it more durable. Additionally the
airfoil is a semi symmetrical allowing it to carry much more weight. AgEagles system comes with a catapult to get
it in the air fast, where it will fly at 40 mph and cover approximately 600 acres in 30 minutes. A cloud-based aerial
Precision Agriculture
agronomic imagery solution is offered in partnership with MyAgCentral, a division of DN2K. This solution has a fully
integrated workflow function that streamlines the process of flying fields and capturing, storing, processing, viewing, Public Saftey

and sharing aerial images. For instance, shape files can be imported into SMSTM Software for use with variable
Regulations
rate applicators. Information on that partnership can be found here.

Research
Agribotix Agribotix gets that what is most important in the drone market is data services not the aircraft. The
company deploys a proprietary software solution to deliver geo-referenced aerial images immediately after a flight
and high-resolution color and NDVI maps within hours of collection. These images are hosted on Agribotixs servers
for access from multiple devices, including mobile devices so that growers can take them into the field while Recent Posts
scouting. Notwithstanding, they do offer the Hornet, which is a simple fixed-wing UAS suitable for agricultural
applications. The unique thing here is that you can rent it on a seasonal lease. It uses open-source hardware and
New Survey: Whats Your Drone
software to keep costs low.

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2/29/2016 Drone Tech Winners and Losers At Precision Aerial Agriculture Show
Crop Copter / Chief Agronomics Matt Barnard, a farmer and founder of this drone vendor, understands what Purchase Experience Like?
growers wants because he listens. Crop Copter offers TBS Discover and his own more durable quad and
hexacopter through Van Horn Precision Technologies. They provide the imaging services and support and even Six Trends Driving the
repair the flyer. All units are complete and ready-to-fly. Commercial Drone Market in 2016
and Beyond
Farm Intelligence / FourthWing / WingScan These Minnesota-based affiliates work in tandem to provide a
complete hardware and software solution for precision agriculture. WingScan is the image data and decision support 3 Things Public Safety Officials
software platform. Fourth Wing is the designer and manufacturer of a small unmanned aircraft system they call Should Know About Drones
Vireo. Vireo comes equipped with a dual-band sensor that is capable of capturing near infrared (NIR) and visual
(RGB) data in a single pass. Farm Intelligence sells the device via its FI2 Sales and Leasing. Commercial Drone Markets: 2015
Year in Review
Field of View LLC Field of View engineers and sells remote sensing devices for drones that service the agricultural
and mapping industries. Their GeoSnap VN-TC is an add-on for the commonly used multispectral cameras. It Uncertain Case for ADS-B In
generates a log of image-associated position and attitude data and manages image capture by triggering the Small Drone Traffic Management
camera based on GPS coordinates. Image log file can be imported into packages like Agisoft to get complete geo-
referenced image maps. Look for Field of View products to operate with the open-source MAVLink Micro Air
Vehicle Communication Protocol soon.
Recent Comments
Horizon Precision Systems This companys booth was packed almost the entire show and the reason is
simple: Horizon offers low-cost entry-level systems. Based in Champaign, Illinois, the company is an offshoot of Colin Snow on New Survey:
Horizon Hobby, LLC, which has distribution facilities in the United States, Europe, and China. It has decades of Whats Your Drone Purchase
experience developing, distributing, and servicing all types of radio control products. So it is no wonder they created Experience Like?
this agriculture-focused subsidiary.
Jesse on New Survey: Whats
Hoverfly Hoverfly demonstrated its tethered UAS called LiveSky. Tethered UAS, in this case a quadcopter, can Your Drone Purchase Experience
stay aloft for much longer than those reliant on a battery alone since power is transmitted from a ground source to Like?
the copter via a long tether. This system is interesting because the LiveSky would maintain its position above the
control device, allowing you to theoretically place it in a truck bed and drive around with it hovering above the truck. mrjac on Six Trends Driving the
You can view a one-minute video of their demo on YouTube here. Commercial Drone Market in 2016
and Beyond
MLB Company During the show, founder Stephen Morris showcased his companys $150,000 Super Bat UAV. Its
a high-end drone model that can fly thousands of feet in the air and survey up to 55,000 acres in a single day. When New Research on Drone Buying
it took to the skies for a demo, all heads turned because it was the only gas-engine-powered drone at the show. All Experience - Quadcopter Blog on
others were electric, and their motors could barely be heard above the sound of wind, but of course they cant fly New Survey: Whats Your Drone
nearly as long. Purchase Experience Like?

Pix4D Pix4D is a software package used to convert the hundreds of aerial images that are taken by drones on Drones and Market Research? |
survey flights into geo-referenced 2D mosaics and 3D surface models and point clouds similar to Autodesk ReCap FocusVision on Market Research
360. Their software is bundled by many UAS vendors including SenseFly, which while on site, handed over the
pictures from their demonstration flight earlier in the day. This gave Pix4D the opportunity to show a 3D surface
model of a demonstration field. Pretty cool.
Archives
PrecisionHawk PrecisionHawks fixed-wing Lancaster platform is impressive. Its lightweight design allows for
swappable sensors, and it diagnoses and monitors in flight critical data like battery life, operational weather/wind February 2016
limitations, structure cracks, and fatigue analysis. But as I have written about here, PrecisionHawk views itself as a
data company, not a drone company. As such, it offers a service it calls PrecisionMapper, which is a cloud-based January 2016
application that gives anyone the ability to upload, store, process, and share their aerial image data.

December 2015
Precision Drone Precision Drone LLC is an Indiana company that manufactures multirotor drones built specifically
for crop surveillance. The company also offers Precision Vision, a crop health imaging software package that
November 2015
delivers a composite video overlay showing the true health of a field in color contrast, which lets growers see how
much sunlight is being absorbed by the crop canopy.
October 2015

SenseFly Of all the demos given at the show, SenseFlys fixed-wing flight of its eBee Ag drone was truly
August 2015
impressive. The hand-launched and self-landing eBee is constructed of EPP foam and carbon fiber, with detachable
wings. It can fly for 45 minutes to a radio-link range of 3 km (1.86 miles), driven by a LiPo battery-powered pusher
July 2015
propeller. eBee Ag can cover up to 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) in a single flight.

June 2015
In this small demo, the operator did a great job of explaining flight operations in real-time. For example, he
programmed the aircraft to fly a lawn-mower pattern up and down the demo field. But when he commanded, the
April 2015
plane would divert off pattern to photograph an area of interest. When that diversion was complete, the plane would
resume the pattern where it left off. Its images are great, too. The vehicle comes with a 12 megapixel Canon S110
NIR (near infrared) still camera as standard with various sensor options, each one electronically integrated in the February 2015
aircrafts autopilot.
December 2014
Trimble Similar to SenseFly, Trimbles UX5 fixed wing aerial imaging solution is impressive. Their unit is fully
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2/29/2016 Drone Tech Winners and Losers At Precision Aerial Agriculture Show
autonomous, flight programmable, and comes with a dedicated Windows-based rugged tablet. It uses a Sony NEX-5
November 2014
camera outfitted with a Voigtlander lens. This makes for very accurate imaging. But unfortunately they do not offer it
for sale in the U.S. yet. Even so, they are working with teams that have regulatory approval for test flights and are
October 2014
perfecting their offering.

[Update February 18, 2015: check with each vendor for their current product offering]
September 2014

Not Present but Accounted For August 2014

3Robotics Agribotix uses (and openly displayed) several 3D Robotics components, including the PixHawk July 2014
flight controller. Precision Hawk admits it now ships more units with APM 2.6 open source autopilot system,
supplanting Lockheeds proprietary Kestrel autopilot. June 2014
DJI This vendors name was mentioned by speakers and users more than any other. I saw more NAZA-M
V2 controllers on vendors multirotor platforms than any other and the new app for flight planned missions May 2014
was the topic of many conversations.
MaxMax Here is where the vendors at the show go to buy an IR-Only, UV + IR + Visible or high resolution April 2014
(HR) converted camera or send one for conversion.
Tetracam The smaller and lighter the camera or image sensor, the longer the flight. Thats why Field of March 2014
Views multispectral imaging packages are equipped with Tetracam multispectral cameras.
February 2014
Not Present and Not Accounted For (not a complete list)

Aerial Media Pros

AeroVironment
Aeryon Labs
Altavian
AutoCopter
CropQuest
Draganfly
Delair-Tech
HoneyComb
Lehmann Aviation
Lockheed Martin
MarcusUAV
Yamaha RMAX

Its not clear why these and many other drone vendors ignore the growing popularity of these types of events. It may
be that, like Trimble, they choose to avoid selling their products in the U.S. for fear of being implicated in any
wrongdoing by a rogue operator. Or perhaps like PrecisionHawk, they are selling only to researchers who have and
FAA certificate of Authorization or Waiver (otherwise known as a COA) as part of their strategy to be a friend of the
FAA. Either way, they should have been here if even to get to make introductions and know their target market
better.

Wrap-up

To reiterate a point in Mitchs post amidst the curiosity and excitement at PAAS 2014 was a lot consternation about
whether commercial drone operations for agriculture will ever happen. As I have written here, if regulations are too
strict, this market will collapse. Some regulations on these types of small drones are due for release to comment by
the end of this year. Lets hope they are not too restrictive and well be at an even bigger show next year.

As always, feel free to comment or you have questions and would like to discuss any of this one-on-one, email me
at colin@droneanalyst.com.

Advice for Newbies, Cool New Products, Drone Technology, Industry Trends

About the Author: Colin Snow

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