Drones have proven to be a great use in many categories including farming. They can be used for aerial inspection of their crops. Though flying the thing back and forth over the fields can be a little tricky and time-consuming. To give a solution to this problem, Boston-based American Robotics created the Scout. It performs everything on its own so the user just needs to set it up for the season and then forget about it for the entire period.
The drone, Scout, itself is a quadcopter which is equipped with both visual and multispectral cameras. It resides in a weatherproof shelter known as Drone Station. The Drone Station comes to Scout. When it is time for Scout to take its daily flight for crops inspection, the roof of the shelter opens and drone automatically takes its flight. It works on a schedule however, it can also be sent out on demand.
The route that it needs to follow is preprogrammed when the system is initially set up. Upon completion of the flight, the Scout lands itself on the shelter and is lowered inside. After landing, its battery is juiced up again for the next day. The drone uploads its gathered data to a cloud-based server. The farmer can access the data after uploading is completed and can check it on their computer for crop stress.
According to the company, the system has already been implemented in various agricultural locations across the US.