These AI-powered drones finally bring precision to herbicide spraying

With population growth, economic development and urbanization, farmers are under constant pressure to produce more food. Farmers now use intensive industrial processes to meet demand, such as applying large amounts of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers to their crops. These chemicals pollute the world’s soils, pollute water supplies and threaten biodiversity.

Climate change has also intensified the growth of certain weeds that compete for nutrients, requiring farmers to use more herbicides to control weeds, further contributing to climate change. Become. So the problem will continue. In addition to environmental problems, there are also huge economic losses associated with the introduction of large-scale spraying. A farmer often has to spray his 100% of the land to kill weeds that only remain on his 3% of the land. With pressure on farmers to sustainably produce enough food to feed a growing population, something is needed.

input: Canadian start up Precision AI — Developed autonomous, AI-powered agricultural drones that can effectively apply herbicides at the plant level and at scale.

“As farms evolve, they are consolidated and farms are getting bigger and bigger because they need to farm more acres, manage more equipment, and make more decisions. , there is more complexity,” said Precision AI’s Vice President of Business Development. Warren Bills,Tell you Sustainable Brand®. “In addition to this, there is also the problem of securing workers. [with] Increasing urbanization makes it even more difficult to attract people to rural areas where jobs are available. ”

Drones such as Precision AI are providing farmers with the labor they need while providing real-time insights, making future predictions, and combining and collecting data to transform farm crops down to individual plants. You will be able to understand more deeply. Overall, this technology could help farmers significantly reduce water usage and costs, eliminate excess chemicals, and promote soil health.

“Farmers aren’t excited to wake up every morning and spend millions of dollars on chemicals. has no choice, so over time, this has created inefficiencies because large decisions have to be made in short periods of time,” Bills said. “Our solution specifically targets the annual chemical overspend caused by broadcast spraying. Real-time, edge-based, high-precision, high-speed AI can reduce that overspend.”

Image credit: Precision AI

Precision AI recently star of hope
A new model that recognizes the use of edge computing, allowing drones to function without an internet connection or cloud, alleviating the problem of limited connectivity in the field. Drones have their own data centers and most of the data is processed internally. This technology enables drones to identify weeds almost instantly. The drone can fly at 70 km/h and plants he can detect and classify with an accuracy of 0.5 mm.

“The scale of this technology, using a 20,000-acre farm and managing every plant individually, sounds a little crazy to think about, but AI and computer vision can make it happen,” Bills said. says Mr.

Crops and weeds vary from region to region, so different AI models need to be developed for each region. Once he receives all the data he needs for his crop, Precision AI can build his model in nearly six weeks.

“Once the model is set up with a standard dataset and you feed it new data, the model starts learning,” Bills explains. “Then it goes through a quality control process. Then we put more quality control procedures in place to see if we need to make adjustments.We are in a startup world so we always have to question and make changes. But it pushes the boundaries of what we can imagine.”

Earn $20 million in equity and grants in 2021, John Deereof 2023 Startup Collaborators, Precision AI is gaining commercial traction and aims to be operational by 2026. There are currently legal restrictions surrounding drone deployments in Canada. However, this should change after governments become more open to new farming technologies and are tested.

“Five years from now, I think our technology will allow us to get the best and most accurate datasets across a wide range of row crops around the world,” exclaims Bills. “We aim to be the leader in this field, expanding beyond herbicides to other types of applications. We are using drones to reduce pesticides, optimize fungicides, We are very keen on academic applications, and there are many potential uses for this technology beyond herbicides.”