Drone Sprayers

[farmerm]

Will there be payload options for control of the common spotted hard courser...

 

[farmerm]

And other such vermin

 

[Two Tone]

Why do we need to carry thousands of litres of water around? 3 or 4 litres of neat chemical, precision applied to target weeds at ultra low volumes with controlled droplet applicators.



Conversely a drone carrying a few litres of neat roundup and crashing, is going to cause much less of an environmental disaster than a 7000 litre sprayer crashing and leaking all its contents.

And environmentally, why blanket spray an entire field, when only 1% of it contains weeds?

You hit the nail on the head here @Sleepy with those words. CDA was a superb system that all the agchem companies hated because of the massive savings in Active Ingredients they used to save -typically 80% saving on translocated fungicides, pgr's and trace elements! 50% on contact herbicides but none on residuals.

I used one in the 1980's and early 90s at anything between 5 and 20 litres/ha. It reduced my cop by a huge amount!

Attach a single rotary-atomiser and a small tank to a drone and you've got it made!

Early rotary atomises were belt driven from a small motor. These weren't very good. The last ones had the motor within the atomiser which was cooled by the liquid as it passed through it. They need to typically spin at about 5,500 rpm but use a tiny amount of power to do so and extremely low flow pressures to supply the right volume/minute

Unfortunately, big brother ag-chem companies squashed their use by ensuring laws on AI concentration levels in the spray tank.

 

[Steevo]

I'll be having one of these as soon as they are available subject to price of course! Then I can see keeping a very old tractor sprayer in the shed for fertiliser application and any one off spraying jobs that need fun applications like fungicides is all we would need.

 

[7610 super q]

Jolly good idea, what, what.

Have no fear though...the clipboard wielding elf n safety brigade will put a stop to this before it gets off the ground.(no pun intended)

 

[Steevo]

I'll happily volunteer to do the TFF in depth review for this one too!

 

[Richard Devon]

you could set this things to fly over neighbours ground and kill off all their ragwort!

 

[Robt]

It's the future.... And it's here! I bet it won't ring me on a Sunday morning to say my sprayer is over applying then when asked about sprayer details won't have a clue!!!!!

 

[Steevo]

It's the future.... And it's here! I bet it won't ring me on a Sunday morning to say my sprayer is over applying then when asked about sprayer details won't have a clue!!!!!

Are you guys trying to make inroads into this tech currently?

 

[Robt]

 

[farmerm]

For the drone enthusiasts with £50 burning a hole in your pocket.. the 2016 Drones for Farming converence is Thursday 10th November.
http://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/events/event.cfm?id=201312

 

[hughwra]

Could be the answer for bracken eradication on hillsides.

Helicopters are OK but a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Exactly our thinking, and currently the only viable application for uav sprayers due to the regs. We're trialing the Agras system for bracken control. We took our PA7 test not so long ago using it - great fun!

The tech is definitely here. And the regs authorities are starting to take note and catch up. Not long now until fully autonomous (and collaborative) uav spraying I reckon, as others have already mentioned.

 

[Richard Devon]

I was in China the other day at a field day/demo and they had this little tool there flying around.
The tank held 6 litres, the battery was the size of something from a motorbike and it was entirely guided by RTK - that's as much as I could understand from my limited Chinese and the rep's limited English......and the price was 11k.

 

[Yale]

I was in China the other day at a field day/demo and they had this little tool there flying around.
The tank held 6 litres, the battery was the size of something from a motorbike and it was entirely guided by RTK - that's as much as I could understand from my limited Chinese and the rep's limited English......and the price was 11k.

That's a fair tool.

Just have to have multiple batteries on a rotation of charge.

 

[hughwra]

I was in China the other day at a field day/demo and they had this little tool there flying around.
The tank held 6 litres, the battery was the size of something from a motorbike and it was entirely guided by RTK - that's as much as I could understand from my limited Chinese and the rep's limited English......and the price was 11k.

This is her I think..... http://www.xaircraft.cn/en/xplanet/explore

Any idea what the nozzles are Richard? They don't look standard....

 

[Richard Devon]

That's a fair tool.

Just have to have multiple batteries on a rotation of charge.

The machine actually came with a kit of three or four batteries (didn't see how they charge them) and about 5 bottles. So I would guess that while its doing it's cycle you keep refilling.

Probably the next step will be weed recognition so it literally only spot sprays.

 

[Richard Devon]

Battery pack going in




Water tank install

 

[Yale]

Battery pack going in




Water tank install

That's a big drone!

Wouldn't want it falling out of the sky on my head.

Is there a weight limit for civilian use of a drone in the U.K.?

 

[hughwra]

Battery pack going in




Water tank install

Have to say it's a neater looking package than the Agras. Smaller tank though.... I found the website for these but it's awaiting approval

 

[hughwra]

Ours in action....

and close up..