Technology in Today’s Farms Is ... Limited
Today’s drones can cover ground much more quickly than a human on foot and are great for identifying issues over a large crop area, but there are limitations. Drones can pick up on problems such as tractor compaction or fertilizer misapplication. They can also detect problems in crops, but can’t tell you what's wrong.
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Most drone systems today are also constrained by short flight times and need to frequently return home to recharge batteries.
Another key need for today's farmers is the ability to accurately and often sample farm soil quality. Soil sampling today is performed infrequently since the samples are slow to collect and are sent to a lab for testing; these delays can really reduce their value!
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The iSWARM system is designed to address all of these limitations by continuously collecting different types of imagery and soil samples. The data and soil are analyzed in real-time by the iSWARM system.
Manually-operated drone scanning a farm (image courtesy of www.droneclick.com)
