UAVs: What are drones and how are they used in agriculture?
Again thank you for joining us today for this session of the AgrAbility, webinar, series my name is Paul Jones I'm, the, manager, of the, National AgrAbility, project, which, is headquartered here, at, Purdue University, in West, Lafayette Indiana, our. Topic. Today is on, you, AVS. Or commonly. Known as drones. Their. Application. In agriculture, and, that, also includes, their application, for people with disabilities, in, agriculture. And. Our. Presenter today is Mark Carter, he. Is the, Purdue. Extension. Agriculture, and Natural Resources educator. From Delaware. County in Indiana and also the precision, AG educator. Some. Of you may not be familiar with AgrAbility. AgrAbility. Is sponsored, by the US Department of Agriculture, and our focus is on issues. Of disability in agriculture. Every. AgrAbility, project is, a partnership, between a, land-grant, University, and at least one, nonprofit. Disability. Services, organization. Right. Now there are 20 funded. State projects, around the country again. The National AgrAbility project, is led by Purdue, University's, breaking new ground resource center and our. Current partners on the National, AgrAbility grant, include goodwill of the Finger Lakes April. Which is the association, of programs, for rural independent. Living Colorado. State University, and Washington, State University. If. You want more information about AgrAbility, feel free to check out the AgrAbility web site at mobility org, we. Have more than 70 archived. Webinars, on that site and a wealth. Of other information including, contact information, for, the state, project so you can check to see if your state has an AgrAbility, project. Okay. At this point I'm going to pass the presentation ball, to mark. Carter, and. He. Will give, the body. Of our presentation, and then. I will return for the polls, and the question and answer period at the end. Okay. Thank you Paul for seeing everybody may be here today and. Bring in a. UAV. Use, and agriculture, to you. Please. Bear with me a little bit my, laptop. With my. With. My cameras. Over here and my. My. Screen. That I'm looking at just sitting right next to it so if I'm, looking to the left or. The right whichever, way it maybe it's. Because I'm looking at my computer screen and not necessarily, straight, at my camera. So, again. My name is mark carter purdue extension here. In delaware county, i'm the AG and natural resources. Educator, I'm, also the statewide they. Call it the precision, AG educator, but really. It's the the. UAV. Initiative. Coordinator. For. About. 82. Or 83 of, the 92, counties in Indiana. We've, got as. It as it goes we, we, have. This. Is last year's numbers. We used to have 17, edge extension. Educators, that, were flying drones, out in the counties, working. With local producers, working with local government, working. With. People. Land, owners that had forestry. Or livestock. Working. With golf course this, we've we've. We've. Worked with a wide client, base, appliance, that. We're. And, we've really happened great success with with. Teaching. People about how. We can, use the. UAV. Technology in. Agriculture. And. I will apologize also. On downtown, Muncie, and we're. In the cam building so we you may hear some sirens from, time to time so, please, bear with us. We. Have several specialists. That are using the UAVs, our. Corn specialist soybean specialist. Two, coordinators. Which I'm warned we've got a digital a coordinator, over on campus, his. Name is John, Scott he he, works with in. Tippecanoe. County, and all the surrounding counties. As part of the the, wall -. Heartland. I. Don't remember what all the what the acronym is exactly. But they're. Trying to bring new technologies to, producers. And tie, that marketplace. With. A gree tail and the, producer, so they're trying to kind of bring the whole the, whole system. Together and. With, new technology. New. Opportunities. For producers and. New. Education. So we're, really there. Really excited about that program and then we also we. Also have, several. Purdue. AG centers. That are. Using. The UAVs, as well we've. Got the, Davis, produced AG. Center just over here in Randolph County I spend. Quite a bit of time over there. Flying. And, trying, to learn the different part how. Different. Sensors, can be utilized. With different crops and. You. Know we're really just scratching the surface on what a lot of this technology's doing but with, great success so. How are we how, are we using UAVs in, agriculture. Field. Scouting, is the big one crop scouting, we're, you know getting that, bird's-eye view to. Be able to see what's out in the field you know just the coloration. Differences. Between. Maybe. Say a wet wet. Area in the field or a, hillside. Or, and and how the factors. Of that growing season, are. Affecting. The crop whether it's do pass insect. Pressure. Disease. Moisture. You know all, those kind of different things that that.
Separate. Are the differentiate. Coloration. Of the vegetation. And, when we take those pictures from above you. Know you can see that and it doesn't necessarily, tell you what, the problems, are but it tells you where you need to go scalp and that's. That, that's the real benefit, imagine. If you will you, have an 80 acre cornfield, now. If, you've, ever been out in the cornfield, and you tried to walk you. Know even, 50, yards, up, and down the road when. That corn is 9, or 10 feet tall, one. You're going to get cut to ribbons and, two, you're. Going to you're not going to be everything. Whereas. That eye in the sky you can actually start, to look and you can see where. If. You walked up and down every row of that cornfield, you're liable to Matt you're probably going to miss something, but, most likely from the air you're going to see those areas of color. Differentiation. And you'll, know exactly where you need to go scalp so. Other. Things we can do with aerial, mapping whether, it's through surveying, or. Using. Them on the farms to create that, whole map. You. Can, create some nice aerial, maps we'll take a look at some of those here in just a few minutes plant. Stand camps, very, helpful, in the springtime. It's. The. Technology still, kind of an infancy, and it's. Not as proven, as what. Some people would like to say it is I I think. It's got another year to work, really, going to be on par with what. With. Where it should be that. Plant health we, were talking. About with the field outing, Point, height that's. You. Know seeing what. What. Growing, what. Growth stage the plants, in most. Times you can if, you it not necessarily, from straight above, but if if. If you get a kind. Of a side view of it you can see the plant height, you. Can find presence, of weeds and disease soil. Moisture, and erosion, erosion is, a big one especially when, the crops are off some. People really. Don't see. The value in flying fields, or being. Out and looking around at, your fields when the crop is off but. There's still a lot of information, there that you can find you, can find that you can find tile, you. Can find areas, of. Erosion. Or wash in a field you, can find where. Maybe. A grass. Waterways. Washing. Out or a lost cob so. There's, different there's different, things there you can do when the when. You're when. The crops even off livestock. Management. Who, would have ever thought you, could sit on your front porch and get. Your drone out and fly. Out to the pasture and, check. And see if all your animals are there you can check your forage, you can check to see if there's. Enough water in the trough or if the water if you've, got an automatic water, to see if it's work. You. Can go out you can check things you can see if there's any trees down, over. Your fence so. There there's a lot of different uses there in, livestock. And then, of course agribusiness. Marketing. If, you, if, you take a picture your farm and you want to put it on your website you. Want to put it on Twitter you want to put it on Facebook. The. You. Know so there's a lot of uses there too. Now. The pros tomb, obviously. Imagery, is going, to be done more frequently, it's done on your, schedule.
I. Mean. You're not going to go out and fly when it's raining, or real real cloudy I mean you can do either with its full cloud or. Nice. And clear but, if you're using a. Flight. Planning software, where you're going to stitch imagery, together if you, have intermittent. Clouds it can screw, up your, it. Can screw up your pictures, and satellite. Works the same way too on a partly cloudy day or really. Cloudy days. Lights tend to have issues just. Like the driven will but. The imagery is more precise, so if you look at the two pictures there, on. The slide you, can see that the satellite, image might, give you, I think. The resolution, last time I checked was about 30 feet, whereas. The the Agra genève, er is. Set. Of inch so, it's down less than one, pixel is less than one inch so. Then, the imagery is a lot more crisp and and. You. Can see in greater, detail, what's going on now does that say that satellite, is useless. Absolutely not. Really. The to work well together the, I mean there's enough information on, that satellite that, you know that exactly. Where you need to go and. Do. Your scouting so. But. The imagery it. Used to be cheaper, than the satellite, or plane but, that's kind of, pricing. Is really kind of all over the place right now and the. But the biggest thing is the. The biggest probe you have all, the, control over your data so, you don't have to upload your, imagery, to a third to, a third, party software. Company. You, can keep it all in-house, and you can just make decisions off the pictures that you take but. If you want to if you want to use somebody like a drone deploy or Sentara, or pix, 40, or whoever you, have that option now. The. Downside. Drones. Take more. Time and effort time, to fly the fields, charge batteries. Process, images, and analyze data, you. Are not required to keep flight loads, that's. One one, thing I need to stress is you are not required to do that I work, for Purdue Purdue. Says that I am required to keep flight logs. However. If, you're, flying a DJI. Most. Of them are the DJI requires, on a manual, flight that, that, you fly off. Of their DJI, go for app I. There. Might be smaller flight planning software's. Or free flight free, flight, planning, software's, out there I'm not. Using them I use the DJI, Go app when, I fly it works. It keeps records, of where you're flying it.
Geo References. All pictures, taken, so, it does quite a bit of good and then. The the drone, is going to require more maintenance I mean you got to take care of your batteries, you got to take care of the bird yeah, there's. A little more work to it and then, there's always that possibility that, you can crash your investment. Just like the smoking. Smoldering. Pile of drone that you see right there in the picture. Okay. So. Let's take a little closer look at. At. Satellite. Versus, Drew real. Quick here this is this is my farm I live. Up just north of Matthew's Indiana, if you all know where that's at. The, picture from the left is climate. Climate. Field, view the, picture on the right is room a drone. Deployed, and I. Flew it with my with, my DJI phantom4. So. Looking. At them the, big takeaway, here is, they're. There most. Of it's pretty close but if you look out there at the point. You're. Going to see a lot of red, surrounded. By some yellow on the, satellite, view but. The drone. Shows. That. There's. A lot more green there and a darker, thing which, indicates, a healthier. Healthier. Photosynthetic. Process, and. Gives. You is saying that the plant, health is better than what the satellite, says, so. If you look at the, if. You look at the harvest, data you. Can see that there was still, there. There's still some, some. Lower populations. Out there for yield but. Off. Of that acre field, we. Had never taken more than 179. Bushels, off of. That field in. Fact we took 200, I think I saw. 263. Bushels, off of that one and had. 230. 234. That's what it was 234, bushels, off of, that point acre and. It. Worked out really nice now some of the, photos of it was a hybrid. So, that was doing some different things with fertilizer. But. If. You, go back to the other image and look at that. The. Satellite. Got it wrong and the drone got it right now. I'm not saying that the satellite is always wrong for. Some people the satellite, works. Really well and if that's the case hey. Great, use it I mean if that meets your needs if it. Doesn't, then, the, drone is another option, but. They do work together really well. Okay. So if. You've, decided hey drone, sounds good what do we got to do to fly it well. The. FAA or, the Federal. Aviation. Administration. And all. Of their mountain. Of rules. And regulations says. If you, are going to use a drone for. Anything that. Brings value to your organization or. Business you. Need a license, now. You don't, have to go get your commercial, pilot's, license, but. You do have to get the the remote the. Remote pilot, certification. Which. Is good for small you, a UAS. Classifications. Now UAS. Small. Unmanned, aircraft, systems, that means your. Drone your radio your iPad your, phone whatever you're using to, fly that drone is considered. A small unmanned, aircraft, system, if, you. Call it a UAV, that, just means unmanned, aerial. Vehicle, that's referring, to the drone itself. For. Our for. Our purposes, we'll just call them a drone most, that's what everybody, kind. Of understands, it as but. With that they're, part 107. What. They call the part 107. To, the title 14, code, says. That you have the one you have to have your. Your. UAS. Certification. Which, it's not real hard to get it mo. The, hardest part is you take a sixty. Question, test you, got two hours to take and it's multiple choice and, you. Have to get better than I think. It's a 70%. Or better to. Pass, the test and if. You, study it's not real hard if. You don't study you're. Probably going to bomb it. But. They also the major provisions. That they have, for, this is your. That. This, and this applies to it, is any, driven. That's between a half a pound and fifty five pounds, you. Got to keep the thing in line of sight which means if you're, standing alongside of the road and you're, you got a cornfield you're flying a cornfield you have to be able to see to the back of the field and still, see that drum now. On a half mile field that's not easy with a light grown in the. Clear sky. So. There's, there's different things you can do there you. Cannot, operate over. People, so. If you have a drone already, and you're flying over the top of the parade, or you're flying over the top of the football field while.
People Out there playing you're, not allowed to do that and, that's not just for people with the light license, that's everybody. We. Are restricted. With those of us with the commercial, license, are restricted, to daylight operations. Only, we're. Every, buddy has, to yield the right-of-way to other aircraft. Everybody, has priority, over you, in the sky which. Means even if you come across a blimp, or a balloon. Or, an. Altar light. Everything. Including, ducks, and geese have. Have. The right-of-way over. Us so. Yeah. That's one of the reasons you have to keep a visual, line. Of sight so you can see what is around that bird and, when. You're out flying and a crop. Duster crosses. Into, your field and they're, actually below. What. Your drones flying at. You. Still have to be able to give them the right of way to get through there safely, because. They can't stop and drop up quite as easy as what we can, now. The maximum, flight, altitude that we have is 400 feet above ground, that. Excuse. Me. That. Is. From. The. From. Wherever that drones at is 400, feet so if, you take off and you're on top of the hill. When. You're at the bottom of that hill you're 400, feet above there which may only be 250. Feet above. You so, that kind of follows the terrain, but. That 400, feet is really, important, when you start thinking that all other aircraft are. Supposed, to stay above 500. Feet and. Then. You get up you, get people flying drones, that, go up you know several, thousand. Feet I bought, a I was trying to buy a mattock, off of. Craigslist. One time and he posted the maximum, altitude that, he'd been at. 13,500. Feet now. Just. Imagine what that drone would do to the 737. If it got sucked into one of the engines it's. Probably, not going to end real pretty for the 200 plus people that could be killed from that experience, so. That's, why they have the 400 feet altitude limit and. Then there's a few others there you can that, you can kind of look through I know I'm getting kind of long winded on some of this stuff to get. Your remote pilot certification you, got to be at least 16, speak, English, you. Have to pass about background check, take. The written multiple-choice, aeronautical. Knowledge exam. And. Then, you you. Retake, that test, every, two years. You. Don't have to have any experience and, you don't need the medical, card which, is a real benefit, for, those, that haven't, been flying, so. As we. Move as. We as you think about what, it takes to fly they. Don't put all these rules in place to be a killjoy they. Put the rules in place to keep people safe and. Let, me tell you I I never thought about it until I started flying the, drones. For Purdue that. The. Sky is a very, very, busy place. Go. Out sometime, and just sit and listen for, two, five. Or ten minutes and you're, liable to hear an airplane fly over, your life will hear a jet fly over, and you, never know when the, National. Guard is going to be flying the f-16s, or the a-10s, so. Just. Something to keep in mind when you if. You're going to operate one these. Let's. Go okay. So, now there's two different kinds, of drones. That are out there primarily. That are used in agriculture. The, multirotors. Quadcopters. What we all oftentimes, call them. Most. Of the you can't se the pricing, and the what, goes along with most, of these I know. That the Mavic too is out now it's. Kind of it's replacing, the Matic Pro and the Phantom for. The. Mitrice know. But not too many people still use the mitrice 100's. The, mitrice 200. 210, and 210, RTK are, becoming. More the, standard. Platform if, you're using larger, sensors. But. A lot of people really flock, to the Phantom, 4 Pro, phantom. 4 and phantom 4 Pro, I've. Been using one for two years and it's an absolute, workhorse, I've probably flown, four. Or five thousand, acres with mine and it's. Given me zero trouble, so, you, can kind of see the price, points, that where you're going to get in for some of those and, again. That's always changing, even. As soon as I update this this list, everything.
Will Change again so. This. Is really kind of where we make our money when. You start using the drones you start thinking about what sensing, options, you're going to use. The. Blue green and red. Think. Of those as kind of that that's your visible, light that. Is what we see that's the same that's. What every camera uses, the blue green and red light spectrum. That's. What's in your cell phone it's what's in your iPad digital. Camera. Even. The camera here in my ID and in my laptop. Is, an. RGB, camera or, what we refer to as an RGB, camera and that, gives you that nice. What. We call an ortho mosaic, it's, a, basically. If you're looking at it's, like looking at Google Earth and. It. Gives you that real live picture. What you have there so, you can see in nice, bright, colors, what you have, now, the other popular, ones the people. Are going to use are going to be NDVI, and, ndre now. NDVI. Normalize. Normalize. Differentiated. Vegetation. Index, that's. Going to use if you look over here to the left it's, going to use the blue green red and, near-infrared that. You know NIR. And that's. Going to take a special sensor. Those. Sensors can range anywhere from. $1,500. Up to. 20,000. And then. You got to have a different, bird to put them on and then. The final one is a. Normalized. Difference red, edge that ndre. And that. Uses, red edge now, if you think about. If. You have visible, light here, and. Near-infrared. Over, here that area right there in the middle that pot that line right between the two of them that's. Where you get your red edge it's just, barely, on. It's. Right there on the verge of visible, light that veering. Into that near-infrared, spectrum. And then. That, near-infrared, can, also include, things like thermal. And. That's. Something we don't I that I haven't done too much work with but we're starting to get more into. That you know if you're looking for temperature, variation. Within. Vegetation. Or soil which. Can tell you some different things about moisture, content. Or the mosaic again, that's that two-dimensional. Image. Standard. RB RGB, camera, it's. Like looking at Google Maps it gives you that eye on the sky look you, can still you, can look at this image and you can see that there's something going on right through the middle of the field kind. Of from, left, to right you know going, from the middle of the field down to. The to, the right bottom, corner and, you. Can see that there's some some different things going on there as you, look at that as, we, start to think about NDVI. That. Is just again that's just the difference in, your vegetation. And. They've, all got stamp they've got a standard, between. One, and zero. That's. How they rank that though, as you look at your if. You look at the diagram. The. Near-infrared. Gets. Divided, by. Or. Gets to pacted but from the red the, the red spectrum. Which. Is then divided, by the near-infrared. Value. Plus the red spectrum, so for, this image we're going to take. The. The point five minus zero point eight divided. By 0.5. Or 0.5. Plus. 0.08. And gives. Us an indication, of 0.72. Which, is going to say we got a little bit more photosynthetic, activity than. The other side which has only got point one for being.
On The lower end of that spectrum. So. With. That in mind we. Can also introduce, different. Algorithms. Based. On whoever. Software. We're actually using, in this. Instance, the two, pictures on the Left were created, with a program. Called drone deploy the. Two images on the right were. Created, with it with. A program. Called bot Lake now. The. Ones on the left is they are using just a standard RGB camera, which. Does not give, you a true NDVI. Their. Algorithm. Is called very, and we'll look at that here just a couple minutes. It. Still gives you enough information. Both. In the ortho, mosaic and in, the, in. The plant health map where. You can see that there are some areas that you might want to look especially. If you don't have any history with Beal now. If you have history with the field you're going to say yeah I kind, of expect that no I really, wasn't expecting the other but. Same thing the picture. On the top right is a, true near-infrared. Picture. Normally. The. Darker. The red. The. Healthier, the plant the, lighter the red not. Quite. As helped so, you can see in the lower right image. That, there's a little more red in some of those places. That. I, think both of those are hillsides, actually. So. You, can kind of see what what, you got there. And again the near-infrared is, going, to reflect higher, on a healthy, leaf which. You can see on the right as opposed. To a dead leaf where nothing really reflects. Well and that's, the whole thing about using, these, different cameras again I said earlier. In the presentation that, the coloration. On the, plants, on is. Going to be a little, bit different but, this is what tell this is what tells the story of the, field is we're. Looking at that reflectance. Through, different, cameras. Again. We'll go back and look. At. The. Different ortho mosaics, we've. Got one from satellite, we've, got one from a near. Infrared picture. And then, one from a drone and as. You look at that you can start to tell some differences, here. You. Can kind of see where the tile lines are the tile lines really, pop on the on. The near. Infrared that's. Where, that's. What most of that is right there but. The one thing that the near infrared and, the satellite, doesn't show you if. You look at the UAV, ortho. Mosaic, up there, in the top corner, top left corner, you can see a. Light. Green patch, now. This is this is all nine-foot, corn right here and what. You don't see is that, light green patch was, actually, 10 foot ragweed, that.
The Producer, had in this field and then. The lines the, the horizontal. Lines back and forth he had a he, ended up having a. Knife. On his 28. Applicator, that was plugged he. Ended up having 400, acres like that so he. He, kind of pays attention to to. The imagery, that he has now again. We can look at the different. Nd. Vis or ver, or, plant. Health maps, and you, can start to really see some differences, now, on the satellite, again, you can really see where the where, the tile is, that where had good drainage. And. You, can start a little bit on the true NDVI with the airplane, that's. A little fuzzier on the. UAV, plant health map. So. To. Kind of cap all this the. NDVI, is that normalized, difference vegetation index. And, we, you can see, again. Where the the satellite, and airplanes really. Utilized. The pictures from that near-infrared, light. Spectrum. Other, than the the weedy areas which. Were really seen better from the UAV, and then, the UAV. Plant health map was using what they called very visible, atmospherically. Resistant, index, again. It's a green yellow red map, now. Here's the dirty little secret. That not. All red is bad so. You look at this and you see, red green yellow okay. In this. Case yeah, the red areas, were marginal, areas that really need to be. Looked at but. Each. The. The, airplane. And the and, the you of the drone kind of match up a little bit better than what the satellites, telling, but. If you think about if you have two different hybrids. And you split your planner, you're. Actually going to get two, different colorations. Off of the two different right of varieties. So. Again. Red is not always bad it just means it's different, so, that's where that, that's where a good worth of mosaic, is candy, and you, can take a look at that to. NZ. Where, you need to go scout. Sim. Terran is a. Producer. Of different, sensors, you. Can get their single sensor mounted. To just, to a mattock, or a phantom, you. Can get the the double, 4k. Which has its. You. Can get an RGB, and near-infrared. Or, near.
Infrared And, red, edge so, it's a true multispectral. Camera, you. Can get the and, you can kind of see the pricing, there none, of its route built cheap but if you if you'd, apply a lot of acres and you. Know you can do some different sensing, you, can really start see the value in in your. Purchasing, options and, I. Think in favor. Of time we'll just we're going to get past some of this we. Did an AMS, we've, been doing AMS, trials, across the state. For. Those that you don't know that's ammonia, salt they. There's. Been a bigger push here in the last few years to start adding sulfur, to. To. Soybeans and here's to. Your. Corn. You, can see back in 2001. Before the, Clean Air Act really got going, how. Much sulfur, pollution, was across, this area versus, 2015. To where people started, cleaning. All that up so. Different. Areas this is a field. At the northern Indiana that that. Was, on the center pivot you can kind of see the two, strike. Two strips right through the middle of the field that are circled, where, they put sulfur in, normally. Gives it a little deeper green kind of let's the nitrogen, get utilized more. Efficiently, in the plan. Again. You can see the. The two dark strips, with the light strip in the middle, the. Other circle, the. Strip and the metals had didn't, have anything applied, to it. More. As the other two did, this. Is from Tipton. County we. Had to we compared, no AMS, versus AMS applied. At. The time of testing, the pods were for, an inch long, in the applied. Versus 3/4, of an inch and to not apply so, this. Is a field this is that same field from her the air, we. Just had some different issues, most. Of the green the. Light green is. There. More for that. That's more water. Damage, than than. Anything else, so. I'm, going to skip through the some of that we're. Using them for conservation. Structures, this is a grass waterway. Think. About how handy, it would be to be able to go out there and just. By flying be able to see what the the, contour, of that, channel, is you. Can see here that that is not quite pitiful, one but, he had the, guy had not mowed that recently. When, they went back and mowed it you can see you've got a nice channel there so, you know NRCS. Could use this to look at channel, depth. To make sure that different. Conservation, structures. Are still within. Specs. For their. Programs. Think. About the severe weather we had last year Shelby. County got got. Quite a bit of hail last. Year, and it just pulverized this. Field. In. Downtown. There and you can see in the, bottom left and in the top right, that's. Where it didn't get hit near as bad as where as, it had right there through the middle of the field so, again. You can start to assess damage for, like crop insurance. We. Use them for. Insurance. Utilities. Business. Entities that you wouldn't think of like infrastructure. Doing. Inspections. On powerlines, doing.
Inspections On, bridges, or buildings. Where it. Would be more difficult for. People or, more dangerous for people to. Be. Involved with if they had to like, rappel, down with a rope or climb something we. Can do volume calculations. For gravel. Companies. This. This, image right here the, the soil was. Impacted. Really, heavily with. A lot of compact, and when they did did, some work this. Utility. Tower and. Here's. Enough this, is a better example, this. Utility, tower. They. Ended up breaking a, tile. Line when they were in the field and. It flooded out that much area now if you're if you're an insurance /, if your crop insurance then. And you got to figure that out it's, a, lot easier to fly it with a drone and find out that you got four point seven nine acres, total as a. - just. Going out there trying to guess, so. We. Use them for aquaculture, we. Put tilapia. In this, pond. And, let. Them eat the, algae all. Year. Long and you can see from July to October that. They really clean that field up or that that, pond up this, was in southern Indiana where, ponds are really important, ponds are really important, to livestock, producers. So. Cleaner. Water means healthier. Animals and then. Once the water got cold you, can have a fish fry. So. What's next what's, the where. Are we going with all this how much money you want to spend on your sensors, a thermal. Camera can run you anywhere upwards. Of. 50,000, dollars a good light our camera, can run you up to 150. Thousand so, I mean you can put a great big camera, on a drone it. Didn't necessarily mean, it's going to give you the. Results, you want you need to have a plan in. Mind. For what you're going to do so. If you have questions, on that feel. Free to reach out to Purdue, Extension. We, really, feel that we are leading the way in the Midwest, as far as UAV technology. I, like, this slide because, we. Kind of poke fun at the. Yeah. Any, of the Indiana. Fans that are out there so. I hope. You don't take that personal, but we, just do it for fun but. The. One thing that I want, everybody to be able to bring home is that. Just. Because. You're. You've got a disability it. Doesn't mean, that, you cannot, you, can't get out and do need, to do I, that's. A picture of me on the right I'm said, I'm sitting, with the lieutenant governor she's. Actually flying one of my drones and. We're. You, know I use. Them every day I'm, paralyzed, from my waist down and I. You I use, it on my farm, we fought my family farms 3,500. Acres we use them all, time for. For. Crop scouting we. Use them to get, out and work with people on the livestock, side did. You fence the check the livestock check the for its check the water. There's. You. Can make quite a bit of money if you want to start a business. Well. I'll come back to that business. Opportunities. Crop scouting, you. Can charge anywhere from $1 to five five, dollars an acre, insurance. Inspections, you, can do upwards, of $25. An hour Photography, same. Infrastructure. Inspection. If you're, good and you got the you. Get in with your local utility you, might be able to charge as much as two hundred and fifty dollars an acre all right per hour. If. You're, into, making, movies, you can make you, know 50 to 70, if, you're in the military I've, heard upwards, of a hundred and ten thousand, a year so. I mean I'm not trying to give them real. Expectation. That, there, is money that can be made with this so. The, technology, allows us again, a manual, flight allows. That person to. See their crops, from a bird's eye view you can find tile erosion. Water. Stand. Issues, without. Getting, out into the field knocking, everything Bale you. Can do plan flights you can use stitching, software to make nice maps, we. Haven't even talked about some. Of the technology, that's coming out with the sprayer drones. Purdue. Has one of them we're still learning how to use it we're. Still trying to figure out licensing. To, get to, where we can do aerial, application. With with, pesticides. For. Different, applications. Like if, there's a wet hole in the back of the feet, field on a year like this where. We got it planted late and there's. Weeds coming on and you don't learn all that water so. You can go back there and spray you. Could. You. Can get them with a fertilizer. Being, in rather than the spray the. Spray tank and you, could go back and spread fertilizer with. A cover crop and fill, that water hole, with cover crop and joke the weeds out so.
I Mean there's. They're. Useful for orchards. Or vineyards, or small. Plots just. The. Like I said the sky's limit and, we're still learning I know. That Paul's, going to shut me off here in just a minute or two so. Summing. It up Germans, have many applications. There's. Several, that are available, there's. Different, sensing of it options, that are available and. The, technology. Brings faster, value, to. The producer, and there's. So many options out there that really we're still just trying to figure it all out so. My. Closing thoughts, are, if. You. If you have an interest in this, number. One make sure that you check out. The. Licensing, process. We, have designed the. Extension, we've designed. Glass, it's. A hands-on. Class so it's not over technology like, we are today, that. We. We, basically get you to the point where you're ready to sit down and take that test. We, also introduce. Different. Applications. To the the. Drones can be used for and. But. The number, one thing there is make sure you get licensed, the, second, thing that you need to do is make sure that your drone fits your application there's. No sense going out and spending twenty, five thousand, dollars for something that you, can do with. A, with. An eighteen, hundred to two thousand dollar dream. If. You don't need true. NDVI, the. Best thing to look for is just that standard, RGB, camera you, can get a lot of information, just by flying a drum. Up in the air taking a few pictures of your field and just, see what you got again, it gives you that bird's-eye view so. And. Then, the last thing that I'd like to touch on make sure that you have insurance, for. Your UAV. Because. If at they heaven forbid that thing falls out of the sky and hit somebody and kills them. The average. Lawsuit. That. Is going to it's going to cost you about six point five million dollars, so. Make, sure that you have enough liability, insurance just. In case something happens, and with. That I'm going to turn it back to Paul, and. I'll. Be happy to entertain any questions that, that, you, want to throw at me. Well. Thanks so much mark for that informative. Presentation. I know I learned a lot of things. Just. A lot of, aspects. To this area. That. You. May not think about right off the bat and one thing I did want to mention that Marcus. Also has, also been a member of our Indian AgrAbility, advisory, team. For quite a few, years too so we appreciate his input in that area. There. Is our first question for mark. Okay. The FAA the, FAA. Licensing. We always get that kind, of confused, too called the FFA, license. It. Is the the price, of that is a hundred, and fifty dollars to take the test and, that is every, time you take so. If you take it and you fail it the, first time it's going to cost you $150. The second time and that. Does not change from, state to state that. In the federal. Test, so. The. When. You get the license. That. Is a federal license, it's good from if I I live, in Indiana I go to Ohio, or, Kentucky. Or California. Or anywhere that. Is that. License is still good for. A drone. Okay. The. Drone. That I'm using is, the, the Phantom 4 and. I. Pick, my Phantom 4 up for $600, off of ebay and. It. Comes three batteries, a nice, backpack. Everything. That I need to fly. That's. Going to be subjective. To whatever. Your. Not whatever, is going to work good for you for my indoor presentations. I use, what they call them AdvoCare, it's, just a smaller version of the Mavic Pro and. That. One, was a thousand, dollars when it first come out you, probably get one now for seven. Or eight hundred dollars, but. Whatever. You're going to use is. Whatever. You decide to use is probably, going to cost something different. Then. And I, know it's going to be a precision, but, this is my phantom bore that, I fly and, it's just got a standard it's. Just got the standard a standard, camera. On it right here and. That, camera, is just, a just, the red-green-blue, camera, I use a, program. Called drone, deploy and, it's. A subscription, for $1000. A year I can create that nice ortho. Mosaic, and I can create that nice plant. Health map and, then. It also gives different options, like if you want to create 3d images. Of so, if I want to a 3d image of my house, or my bonds, or. Migraine, leg and then set up I could do that, so. It, all just depends, on what your application is. And there's, I'm, not I'm not promoting, drone deploy I'm just saying that's what works good for me at this time but. I'm also using a, fixed-wing. Bird. That. Costs, $6,000. And if. You, want them if you want the software for that its proprietary. And strictly. For that bird and the, cost, for it is a hundred and fifty dollars a month plus. Like $30, 30, cents an acre that you process so. The, pricing. Really varies, between, between. Companies. Not. Having to be able to see the dream when you fly it well, that's you, pretty much well set it right there, if.
You're Going to fly it you have to be able to see it I know that there's a lot of people's, that like to get the goggles and fly, on for. What they call fpv, first-person. View or, will, fly off the iPad you'll, see whatever you see off the iPad and, I. Find. Myself doing that at times but when I do that I have a visual observer with, me to make sure that the airspace is clear, because. If you're, flying if you're, flying on the goggles and that, bird is two miles away. The. True that you're going to be seeing exactly, what the camera sees and, you're not going to be able to see that airplane, that's coming. Into. Your airspace, you're. Not you may not be able to see. Everything. That's around you now even if you're pivoting, and, swoop and swiveling. And looking, up looking down oh you're, still going to miss something, you might not see that eagle, that's going to come in and take you out take out your gun and it, does happen so. You. Right, there, in. Your question. You have to be able to see the, drone when, you fly it. Just. For safety purposes. I, had, a question that just came in through, the chat Oh, it, disappeared, I'll have to get a tie a. Ribbon. Here, okay. All answer the one you put up you. Shed satellite, images, how do you order satellite, in for specific, geographic. Areas order the approximate, cost okay. That's going to depend on who you. I'm. I was, i. Was using, climate. Corporation's. Field, view we. That's that's, what we use on our farm so. Again. I'm not promoting them promoting. In circuit, through pioneer, or, anybody. Else and. You, that's. Something that really. You'll. Have to do a little, bit of research, and see what works best for you feel. For you i think, it's about a thousand, dollars a year again. I don't know what i don't know what in circa is and that might be part of granular, now, i. Know, there's some others out there that are available that, give even. Better, resolution. Than, that than, that 30 feet some of them are some, of them are down to to. About a couple, inches or, sub inch but I know that those are a little bit more learn exactly. What those are I couldn't tell you. Okay. Our question, in, the chat that came up how often do you have to renew your FAA. License. Is the applicant, also required, to provide. TSA. Transportation. Safety Authority background. Check fees. You. Renew you have to retest, every two years. So. I took, my my, test back in October. A 17, so. Really I need to start thinking about. Renewing. My license. Before, the before, October. 31st, so. If, I don't get a pen binding it, will spin that license. So. Every two years and again it's a hundred and fifty dollars to retake the test. No, you do, not pay for the, TSA background. Check that's, just something that they do once. You take the test you actually, log in to the FFA, website, the. Website they give you and you, create a profile, and, you. Apply to it through that and melt. Your background, check and it all takes about six, weeks before you'll actually get your license. Assuming. That you pass. So. Mark will write the end of our time did, you want to give. A closer, view of the drones you have when we talked about that I could go ahead and yeah, yeah it's out of this and I'll show a bigger picture of you there if you like to hold. Up your, come. Here I, look. A little. Higher there. We go, that, that, right there is what they call the tallow. It's. About. Two. Inches, it's, not great big but, we use these in our, program, or our indoor, programming. And teaching people how to fly you hook it up to your your, smartphone, and the. Reason we eat is these it looks like something, you'd get a Walmart, but, this has actually got the technology in it that it'll. If when, you turn it on it'll, sit there and hover it'll. Take off and it'll hover and just. Sit there, it won't like crash into the wall just randomly, and and it. Takes it's. Got a camera on it it's it's, not well it's not on a gamble, but, it's still a 4k. Camera and I. Think it's like eight megapixel. So it's still a pretty good camera, but, again, that's the Telo te ll o. 150. 150. Bucks but. It's, a good entry-level if you, just you know something for the kids. This. Is the magic air that I was talking about it. Is on a gimbal, the. Camera is on a gimbal as. You can see it moving or not but what. Makes this thing nice it's small, it's, about ten inches eight well, not even ten inches you. Can see my. Hand versus, the the, size, of that thing. But. It's nice because it's, got obstacle, avoidance on, the front you can see that here. And on the back here. And. Then on the bottom that's. What all the all the, different little eyes are and. Again. 4k, camera, I think, it's a 12 megapixel camera. So, it takes really nice pictures, and video but.
I Use that on my, indoor programs. Mainly, kids. Love it because I can fly it with just hand movements. And showing. You know just. Some of the different fun things you can do with it and then. I also I've also, showed. The. M4. This. Is not the pro but, it still has a right. Here you can see it's got the little eyes on it it's got the eyes on the bottom. But. That is the obstacle avoidance this, this guy right here is hundred and several thousand, acres I, had. No trouble with it at all so, that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get involved with this. But. It does take a little bit of time to get get, through the test and get that license, and kind, of figure out what you need and if, if you have any questions. Feel. Free that, you can always send, me an email. I don't. Pause. It okay if I if I see my email with almost sure definitely. If. You, want to you can reach out to me at at. CA, RT. E26, for at, purdue GED. You I. Don't. Know if you want to put that up on the screen. Look it in the chat. Ke. Oh. Okay. Sorry. Should. Be ciear te two six four at Purdue, edu. And. Pickle, three and sweet, deal I'll, be more than happy to talk with you, or. Answer any questions, that you might have there, you go. Okay. Well. Thanks again mark appreciate, all that great information we're, going to archive this on our website and thank. You to everybody that joined us today we. Will be looking, forward to hopefully seeing you on our next webinar in, a couple months have. A great day.
2019-09-09 13:51
