Unmanned Aerial Systems In Agriculture

This book showcases how new and emerging technologies like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are trying to provide solutions to unresolved socio-economic and environmental problems. Unmanned vehicles can be classified into five different types according to their operation. These five types are unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles (operating on the surface of the water), unmanned underwater vehicles, and unmanned spacecraft. Unmanned vehicles can be guided remotely or function as autonomous vehicles. The technology has a wide range of uses including agriculture, industry, transport, communication, surveillance and environment applications. UAVs are widely used in precision agriculture; from monitoring the crops to crop damage assessment. This book explains the different methods in which they are used, providing step-by-step image processing and sample data. It also discusses how smart UAVs will provide unique opportunities for manufacturers to utilise new technological trends to overcome the current challenges of UAV applications. The book will be of great interest to researchers engaged in forest carbon measurement, road patrolling, plantation monitoring, crop yield estimation, crop damage assessment, terrain modelling, fertilizer control, and pest control.

Unmanned Aerial Systems in Agriculture: Eyes Above Fields bridges the gap between knowledge of concept and real-world use and operations of UASs in agri-production. Based on a valuable combination of themes presented at the 13th European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (EFITA) and supplemented by targeted invited articles of key-scientists, this book presents a full-spectrum view of the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for agricultural applications. It integrates dispersed knowledge in the field, providing a holistic approach regarding UAVs and other UAS and their use in sustainable decisions. The integrated approach of the book provides a fresh look on contemporary agriculture-related issues, following precision farming approaches, by educating on a range of different issues of remote sensing and its use in agriculture. Furthermore, the operational planning aspects for UAS in agriculture focus part of the book provides information that is missing from other resources. Addresses practical issues and the latest technology application insights Provides specialized and comprehensive information for daily use-cases Ties remote sensing using aerial systems and precision farming issues

"This volume provides a useful detailed review of 250 UAVs that examines their usefulness in enhancing profitability, yield, and quality of crop production. A detailed view of the recent trends indicates an increase in agricultural drone production. Millions of dollars have been invested in start-ups that produce agro-drones in past several years. North America, Europe, China and the Far East have excelled in offering a large number of UAV models. Some of them are versatile, a few are specific, and many of them are low cost. With so many drone models (over 1200) available, how do farmers and agricultural specialist choose the models best for them? This compendium examines the most useful drones and provides the pertinent details about each drone, its producer, cost incurred, and its pros and cons. It covers their technical specifications, suitability for various purposes, previous performances in farms, and possible benefits to farmers. The introduction sets the scene, emphasizing the need for this compendium and expounding on the benefits of UAVs in crop production. The volume describes the agricultural uses of UAVs and provides a status report of the drone usage in farms. Drones can be used to measure soil fertility and monitor crops, to time the spraying of liquid fertilizers and plant protection chemicals to control pests and diseases, to monitor irrigation, to map yields, and to make forecasts. The volume goes into great detail about the specifications of each of 250 agricultural drone models covered. These include fixed-wing drones, fixed-wing (hybrid) VTOL helicopters, multi-copters, tilted-wing drones, etc. The book includes a few drones meant more for military or other purposes (e.g. recreation/fun) but that could be easily modified and adapted for the farming sector. A detailed listing of agricultural and nonagricultural uses of each drone model is made available. The reviews compare activities among the UAVs, such aerial imagery of crops, ability to provide spectral analyses to collect useful data about a crop's growth patterns, and how they can be used to gauge crop canopy temperature (i.e. water stress index), determine grain maturity, and much more. The volume also includes addresses and useful information about industries that produce drones have also been included. One chapter deals exclusively with blimps, balloons and kites that could also be used for aerial survey of crops. This timely book is just in time to address the burgeoning aerial robot industry worldwide. This compendium will be valuable for farmers, agricultural engineers, agricultural research centers, universities, and faculty and students worldwide. Agricultural companies and those in aeronautics technology will also find much of value in this reference."--

Farm fields can span hundreds of hectares. With so much area to cover, checking on crops and livestock can be difficult. But with an agricultural drone, this job becomes much simpler. Discover how drones can be used to help farmers to look after their animals, and increase their harvests.

This book, consisting of 8 chapters, describes the state-of-the-art technological progress and applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in precision agriculture. It focuses on the UAV application in agriculture, such as crop disease detection, mid-season yield estimation, crop nutrient status, and high-throughput phenotyping. Different from individual papers focusing on a specific application, this book provides a holistic view for readers with a wide range of subjects. In addition to researchers in the areas of plant science, plant pathology, breeding, engineering, it is also intended for undergraduates and graduates who are interested in imaging processing, artificial intelligence in agriculture, precision agriculture, agricultural automation, and robotics.

This volume responds to the growing interest in adopting aerial robots (UAVs, or drones) for agricultural crop production, which are revolutionizing farming methods worldwide. The book provides a detailed review of 250 UAVs that examines their usefulness in enhancing profitability, yield, and quality of crop production. Recent trends indicate an increase in agricultural drone production and use. Millions of dollars have been invested in start-ups that produce agro-drones in the past several years. North America, Europe, China, and the Far East have excelled in offering a large number of UAV models. Some of them are versatile, a few are specific, and many of them are low cost. With so many drone models (over 1200) available, how do farmers and agricultural specialists choose the models best for them? This compendium examines the most useful drones and provides the pertinent details about each drone, its producer, cost incurred, and its pros and cons. It covers their technical specifications, suitability for various purposes, previous performances in farms, and possible benefits to farmers. It covers fixed-wing drones, fixed-winged (hybrid) VTOL helicopters, multi-copters, tilted-wing drones, etc. The book includes a few drones meant more for military or other purposes (e.g. recreation/fun) but that could be easily modified and adapted for the farming sector. The reviews compare activities among the UAVs, such aerial imagery of crops, ability to provide spectral analyses to collect useful data about a crop’s growth patterns, and how they can be used to gauge crop canopy temperature (i.e. water stress index), determine grain maturity, and much more.

The FAO-ITU E-agriculture strategy guide (available at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5564e.pdf) is actively being used to assist countries in the successful identification, development and implementation of sustainable ICT solutions for agriculture.The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, and connected analytics has great potential to support and address some of the most pressing problems faced by agriculture in terms of access to actionable real-time quality data. Goldman Sachs predicts that the agriculture sector will be the second largest user of drones in the world in the next five years. Sensor networks based on the Internet of things (IoT) are increasingly being used in the agriculture sector to meet the challenge of harvesting meaningful and actionable information from the big data generated by these systems. This publication is the second in the series titled E-agriculture in action (2016), launched by FAO and ITU, and builds on the previous FAO publications that highlight the use of ICT for agriculture such as Mobile technologies for agriculture and rural development (2012), Information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development (2013) and Success stories on information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development (2015). The ultimate aim is to promote successful, scalable, sustainable and replicable ICT for agriculture (ICT4Ag) solutions.

AUTONOMOUS AIRBORNE WIRELESS NETWORKS Discover what lies beyond the bleeding-edge of autonomous airborne networks with this authoritative new resource Autonomous Airborne Wireless Networks delivers an insightful exploration on recent advances in the theory and practice of using airborne wireless networks to provide emergency communications, coverage and capacity expansion, information dissemination, and more. The distinguished engineers and editors have selected resources that cover the fundamentals of airborne networks, including channel models, recent regulation developments, self-organized networking, AI-enabled flying networks, and notable applications in a variety of industries. The book evaluates advances in the cutting-edge of unmanned aerial vehicle wireless network technology while offering readers new ideas on how airborne wireless networks can support various applications expected of future networks. The rapidly developing field is examined from a fresh perspective, one not just concerned with ideas of control, trajectory optimization, and navigation. Autonomous Airborne Wireless Networks considers several potential use cases for the technology and demonstrates how it can be integrated with concepts from self-organized network technology and artificial intelligence to deliver results in those cases. Readers will also enjoy: A thorough discussion of distributed drone base station positioning for emergency cellular networks using reinforcement learning (AI-enabled trajectory optimization) An exploration of unmanned aerial vehicle-to-wearables (UAV2W) indoor radio propagation channel measurements and modelling An up-to-date treatment of energy minimization in UAV trajectory design for delay tolerant emergency communication Examinations of cache-enabled UAVs, 3D MIMO for airborne networks, and airborne networks for Internet of Things communications Perfect for telecom engineers and industry professionals working on identifying practical and efficient concepts tailored to overcome challenges facing unmanned aerial vehicles providing wireless communications, Autonomous Airborne Wireless Networks also has a place on the bookshelves of stakeholders, regulators, and research agencies working on the latest developments in UAV communications.