Unmanned aerial systems for agriculture and natural resources

Abstract

Feature Unmanned aerial systems for agriculture and natural resources Sean D. Hogan, Drone Service Coordinator, Informatics and GIS Statewide Program, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Maggi Kelly, Director, Informatics and GIS Statewide Program, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources; Faculty Director, Geospatial Innovation Facility, College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley; Professor and UC Cooperative Extension Specialist, Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley Brandon Stark, Director of the Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft System Safety, UC Merced and UC Office of the President YangQuan Chen, Director, Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab, UC Merced S mall unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also known as drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, have a rapidly growing role in research and practice in agriculture and natural resources. Here, we present the parameters and key limitations of the technology, summarize current regulations and cover examples of University of California research enabled by UAS technology. Motorized UAS were introduced as a potential remote sensing tool for scientific research in the late 1970s. However, due to a variety of limitations (the weight and limited functionality of available sensors and cameras, the lack of GPS-guided autopi- lots and so on) these platforms had few practical applica- tions (Przybilla and Wester-Ebbinghaus 1979; Wester- Ebbinghaus 1980; cited by Colomina and Molina 2014). For years, UAS technology was led by military needs and ap- plications. The relatively few applications in research and agriculture included deployments in Japan for crop dusting and in Australia for meteorological studies (Colomina and Molina 2014). In the past decade, several factors have greatly increased the utility and ease of use of UAS, while prices have fallen. Consumer demand drove the hobby craft industry to make major improvements in UAS vehicles. Integrating improved battery tech- nology, miniature inertia measurement units (IMU, initially developed for smartphones), GPS and cus- tomizable apps for smartphones and tablets has deliv- ered improved flight longevity, reliability, ease of use and the ability to better utilize cameras and other sen- sors needed for applications in agriculture and natu- ral resources (see below, Types of UAS). Innovations in sensor technology now include dozens of models of lightweight visible-spectrum and multispectrum cameras capable of capturing reliable, scientifically valid data from UAS platforms (see UAS sensors) (Whitehead and Hugenholtz 2014). Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has helped fa- cilitate increased UAS use, with rule changes adopted in August 2016 that lowered what have previously been significant regulatory obstacles to the legal use of UAS for research and commercial purposes (see Regulations sidebar). UC faculty throughout California are using UAS in a wide range of agricultural and environmental research projects — from grazed rangelands to field crops and orchards, forests, lakes and even the ice sheets of Greenland http://calag.ucanr.edu • JANUARY–MARCH 2017 5 Will Suckow The Inspire 1 drone, made by DJI, flies with an RGB camera over the UC Berkeley Blue Oak Ranch Reserve in Santa Clara County.