Impact of drones on precision agriculture

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the use of drones and their impact on precision agriculture. The rapid expansion of the world's population has given rise to increasing crop scarcity. This, in turn, has necessitated the use of agricultural automation whereby unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), more commonly known as drones, can serve as a pivotal data gathering device. Beyond the advantages of accessibility, drones are capable of providing near-real-time remote sensing data from either the field or from the farm home base with immediate uplink capabilities for analytical processing. The immediate accessibility of drone imagery data and the corresponding analytical findings would allow farmers to respond quickly to operational changes. The disruptive force of this unprecedented data-capturing device lies in converting the data into useful and invaluable information for farmers. Due to the accessibility and cost effectiveness of drones to fly at low altitudes on daily frequencies, combined with real-time crop diagnosis through image recognition, one could expect to see drones playing a bigger role in preventive precision agriculture (PPA).