The Role of High Payload Drones In Agriculture as Flying Robots

Drones are being used for an ever widening range of agricultural applications enabled by new technology and diminishing regulatory constraints. Most current drone options are small, battery powered units and when equipped with cameras or other sensors they are very well suited to scouting and monitoring tasks (see this earlier article). There are a variety of other farm-related tasks carried out with ground-based crews and equipment. Which of those are amenable to a drone-based solution? There is also a well-developed agricultural aviation industry based on piloted aircraft. Could some of those activities be handled by drones? To explore these questions, I interviewed two high capacity drone manufacturers and two ag aviation companies.

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