Again, thank you for joining us today for
the session of the AgrAbility
webinar series.
My name is Paul Jones.
I'm the manager of the national
ArgAbility project which is
headquartered here at Purdue University
in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Our topic today is on UAVs,
or commonly known as drones,
their application in agriculture.
And that also includes
their application for
people with disabilities in agriculture.
And our presenter today is Mark Carter.
He is a Purdue Extension Agriculture and
Natural Resources
educator from Delaware County in Indiana,
and also the Precision Ag educator.
Some of you may not be
familiar with AgrAbility.
AgrAbility is sponsored by
the US Department of Agriculture and
focuses on issues of
disability in agriculture.
Every AgrAbility project is a partnership
between a land grant university and
at least, one nonprofit
disability services organization.
Right now there are 20 funded
state projects around the country.
Again, the national
AgrAbility project is led by
Purdue University's Breaking
New Ground Resource Center.
And our current partners on
the national AgrAbility grant include
goodwill at the Finger Lakes, APRIL,
which is the Association of Programs for
Rural Independent Living.
Colorado State University and
Washington State University.
If you want more information
about AgrAbility,
feel free to check out the AgrAbility
website, agrability.org.
We have more than 70 archived webinars
on that site, and a wealth of
other information, and including contact
information for the state project.
So you can check to see if your
state has an AgrAbility project.
Okay, at this point, I'm going to pass
the presentation ball to Mark Carter.
And he will give the body of our
presentation, and then I will return for
the polls, and the question,
and answer period at the end.
>> Okay, thank you, Paul.
Appreciate everybody letting
me be here today, and
bringing UAV, Use in Agriculture to you.
Please bear with me a little bit.
My laptop with my camera is over here, and
my screen that I'm looking at is
just sitting right next to it.
So if I'm looking to the left or
the right, whichever way it may be, it's
because I'm looking at my computer screen
and not necessarily straight at my camera.
So again, my name's Mark Carter,
Purdue extension here in Delaware County.
I'm the ag and natural resources educator.
I'm also the statewide,
they call it the precision ag educator,
but really,
it's the UAV initiative coordinator for
about 82, or
83 of the 92 counties here in Indiana.
We've got, as it goes, we have,
this is last year's numbers.
We used to have 17 extension educators
that were flying drones out in
the counties,
working with local producers.
Working with local government,
working with people,
landowners that had forestry or
livestock, working with golf course.
We've worked with a wide base of clients
that we've really had a great success
with teaching people about how we can
use the UAV technology in agriculture.
And I will apologize also, I'm downtown
Muncie, and we're in the county building.
So you may hear some
sirens from time to time.
So please bear with us.
We have several specialists
that are using the UAVs.
Our corn specialists, soybean specialists,
two coordinators, which I'm one.
We've got a digital ag
coordinator over on campus.
His name is John Scott.
He works within Tippecanoe County and
all the surrounding counties as
part of the Wabash Heartland,
I don't remember what
the acronym is exactly.
But they're trying to bring
new technologies to producers,
and tie that marketplace with
ag retail and the producer.
So they're trying to kind of
bring the whole system together,
and with new technology, new opportunities
for producers, and new education.
So, [INAUDIBLE], I know they're
really excited about that program.
And then we also have several Purdue ag
centers that are using the UAVs as well.
We've got the Davis produce ag center
just over here in Randolph County.
I spend quite a bit of time over there,
flying and trying to learn the different
part, or learning how different sensors
can be utilized with different crops.
And you know we're really just scratching
the surface on what a lot of this
technology is doing but
with great success.
So how are we using UAVs in agriculture?
Field scouting is the big one.
Crop scouting,
we're getting that bird's eye view to
be able to see what's out in the field.
Just the coloration
differences between maybe
say a wet area in the field or
a hillside, and
how the factors of that growing
season are affecting the crop.
Whether it's due pass,
insect pressure, disease,
moisture, all those kinds of
different things that separate or
that differentiate coloration
of the vegetation.
And when we take those pictures
from above, you can see that, and
it doesn't necessarily tell
you what the problems are, but
it tells you where you need to go scout.
And that's the real benefit.
Imagine if you will,
you have an 80 acre cornfield.
Now, if you've ever been
out in a cornfield and
you tried to walk even 50 yards, up and
down the rows when that corn is nine or
ten feet tall.
One, you're gonna get cut the ribbons,
and two,
you're not gonna be
able to see everything.
Whereas that eye in the sky, you can
actually start to look and you can see
where, if you walk up and down every row
of that cornfield you're liable to met,
you're probably going to miss something.
But most likely from the air you're gonna
see those areas of color differentiation,
and you'll know exactly
where you need to go scout.
So, other things we can do with it,
aerial mapping,
whether it's through surveying, or
using them on the farms
to create that whole map.
You can create some nice aerial maps.
We'll take a look at some of
those here in just a few minutes.
Plant stand counts,
very helpful in the springtime.
If the technology is still
kind of in its infancy, and
it's not as proven as what some
people would like to say it is.
I think it's got another year or
two before it's really gonna be
on par with where it should be.
That plant health we were talking about
with the field scouting, plant height.
That's seeing what growth
stage the plant's in.
Most times, not necessarily
from straight and above, but
if you get kind of a side view of it,
you can see the plant height.
You can find presence of weeds and
disease, soil moisture and erosion.
Erosion is a big one,
especially when the crops are off.
Some people really don't see
the value in flying fields or
being out and looking around at
your fields when the crop is off.
But there's still a lot of
information there that you can find.
You can find tile.
You can find areas of erosion,
or washed field.
You can find where maybe a grass water
waste washing out, or a loss crop.
So there's different things there
you can do when the crops even off.
Livestock management, who would have ever
thought you could sit on your front porch,
and get your drone out, and
fly out to the pasture.
And check and
see if all your animals are there?
You can check your forage.
You can check to see if there's
enough water in the trough,
or if the water, if you've got an
automatic waterer to see if it's working.
You can go out and you can check things,
you can see if there's any
trees down over your fence.
So there's a lot of different
uses there in livestock,
and then of course,
agribusiness marketing.
If you take a picture of your farm and
you wanna put it on your website,
you wanna put it on Twitter,
you wanna put it on Facebook.
So there's a lot of uses there, too.
Now, the pros to them, obviously
imagery's gonna be done more frequently.
It's done on your schedule.
You're not gonna go out and fly when
it's raining or real, real cloudy.
I mean you can do it either when
it's full cloud or nice and clear.
But if you're using a flight planning
software where you're gonna
stitch imagery together.
If you have intermittent clouds
it can screw up your pictures.
And satellite works the same way, too.
On a partly cloudy day or
a really cloudy day, satellites tend to
have issues just like the drone will.
But the imagery is more precise.
So if you look at the two
pictures there on the slide,
you can see that the satellite
image might give you,
I think the resolution last time
I checked was about 30 feet.
Whereas the AgriDrone NDVI
is sort of an inch,
so it's down less than,
one pixel is less than one inch.
So the the imagery is a lot more crisp,
and
you can see in greater
detail what's going on.
Now, does that say that
satellite is useless?
Absolutely not,
really the two work well together.
I mean, there's enough information
on that satellite that you know
that exactly where you need to go and
do your scouting.
So, but the imagery used to be
cheaper than the satellite or planes,
but that's kinda, pricing's really
kind of all over the place right now.
But the biggest thing is,
the biggest pros,
you have all the control over your data.
So you don't have to upload your imagery
to a third party software company.
You can keep it all in house and
you can just make decisions off
of the pictures that you take.
But if you wanna use something
like a Drone Deploy or
Sentara, or Pix40, or whoever,
you have that option.
Now, the downside.
Drones take more time and
effort, time to fly the fields,
charge batteries,
process images and analyze data.
You are not required to keep flight logs.
That's one thing I need to stress is,
you are not required to do that.
I work for Purdue, Purdue says that
I am required to keep flight logs.
However, if you're flying a DJI,
most of them are,
the DJI requires on a manual flight
that you fly off of their DJI GO 4 app.
There might be some other
flight planning software or
free flight planning softwares out there.
I'm not using them,
I use the DJI GO app when I fly, it works,
it keep records of where you're flying.
It geo references all pictures taken,
so it does quite a bit of good.
And then the drone's gonna
require more maintenance.
I mean,
you gotta take care of your batteries,
you gotta take care of the birds.
There's a little more work to it.
And then there's always that possibility
that you can crash your investment just
like the smoking smoldering pile of drone
that you see right there in the picture.
Okay, so let's take a little closer
look at the satellite versus drone.
Real quick here, this is my farm.
I live up just north of Matthews,
Indiana, if you all know where that's at.
The picture on the left
is Climate Fieldview.
The picture on the right is Drone Deploy,
and
I flew it with my DJI Phantom 4.
So looking at them,
the big takeaway here is,
most of it is pretty close.
But if you look out there at the point,
you're gonna see
a lot of red surrounded by some
yellow on the satellite view.
But the drone shows that there's a lot
more green there and a darker green,
which indicates a healthier
photosynthetic process.
And gives you,
it is saying that the plant health is
better than what the satellite says.
So if you look at the harvest data,
you can see that there's still some
lower populations out there for yield.
But off of that acre field,
we have never taken more than
179 bushels off of that field.
In fact, we took 200,
I think I saw 263 bushels off of that one,
234 bushels off of that point acre,
and it worked out really nice.
Now some of it was hybrid,
some of it was doing some different
things with the fertilizer.
But if you go back to the other image and
look at that,
the satellite got it wrong,
the drone got it right.
Now, I'm not saying that
the satellite is always wrong.
For some people,
the satellite works really well.
And if that's the case,
hey, great, use it.
I mean, if that meets your needs.
If it doesn't,
then the drone is another option,
but they do work together really well,
okay.
So, if you've decided, hey drone sounds
good, what do we get to do to fly it?
Well, the FAA or
the Federal Aviation Administration
in all of their mountain of rules and
regulations says.
If you are going to use a drone for
anything that brings value
to your organization or
business, you need a license.
Now, you don't have to go get
your commercial pilot's license,
but you do have to get
the remote pilot certification.
Which is good for
small UAS classifications.
Now UAS, small unmanned aircraft systems,
that means your drone,
your radio, your iPad.
Whatever you're using to fly
that drone is considered a small
unmanned aircraft system.
And if you call it a UAV,
that just means unmanned aerial vehicle.
That's referring to the drone itself.
For our purposes we'll
just call him a drone.
That's what everybody kind
of understands it as.
But with that, the Part 107,
what they call
the Part 107 to the Title
14 Code says that
one,you have to have
your UAS certification.
Which it's not real hard to get.
The hardest part is you
take a 60 question test.
You got two hours to take it.
It's multiple choice and
you have to get better than I
think it's a 70% or
better to to pass the test.
And if you study, it's not real hard.
If you don't study,
you're probably gonna bomb it.
But they also,
the major provisions that they have for
this is, and this applies to any drone
that's between a half pound and 55 pounds.
You gotta keep the thing in line of sight.
Which means if you're standing
along side of the road.
And you're flying a corn field,
you have to be able to see to the back
of the field and still see that drone.
Now on a half mile field,
that's not easy with a light
colored drone in the clear sky.
So there's different
things you can do there.
You cannot operate over people.
So if you have a drone already and
you're flying over the top of the parade.
Or you're flying over the top of
the football field while people
are out there playing,
you're not allowed to do that.
And that's not just for
people with the license, that's everybody.
With those of us with the commercial
license are restricted to daylight
operations only.
Everybody has to yield the right
of way to other aircraft.
Everybody has priority
over you in the sky.
Which means even if you come across
the blimp or a balloon or an ultralight.
Everything including ducks and
geese have the right of way over us.
So that's one of the reasons you
have to keep visual line aside,
so you can see what is around that bird.
And when you're out flying,
a crop duster crosses into your field.
They're actually below what
your drones flying at.
You still have to be able to give them the
right away to get through there safely.
Because they can't stop and
drop quite as easy as what we can.
Now the maximum flight
altitude that we have
is 400 feet above that [COUGH] excuse me.
That is from wherever that
drones that is 400 feet.
So if you take off and
you're on top of the hill.
When you're at the bottom of that hill,
you're 400 feet about there which
may only be 250 feet above you.
So that kind of follows the terrain.
Now that 400 feet is really important
when you start thinking that all
other aircraft are supposed
to stay above 500 feet.
And then you get people flying drones
that go up several thousand feet.
I was trying to buy a Mavic
off of Craigslist one time.
And he posted the maximum altitude
that he'd been at 13,500 feet.
Now, just imagine what that
drone would do to a 737,
if it got stuck into one of the engines.
It's probably not gonna
end real pretty for
the 200-plus people that could
be killed from that experience.
So that's why they have
the 400-feet altitude limit.
And there's a few others there you can
that you can kind of look through.
And I know I'm getting kind of
long winded on some of this stuff.
To get your remote pilot certification
you got to be at least 16, speak English.
You have to pass a background check,
take the written multiple choice
aeronautical Knowledge Exam.
And then you retake that
test every two years.
You don't have to have any experience and
you don't need the medical card,
which is a real benefit for
those that haven't been flying.
So as we think about what it takes to fly,
they don’t put all these rules
in place to be a killjoy.
They put the rules in
place to keep people safe.
And let me tell you, I’ve never
thought about it until I started
flying the drones for Purdue that
the sky is a very, very busy place.
Go out some time, and just sit and
listen for five or ten minutes.
And you're liable to hear
an airplane fly over,
you're liable to hear a jet fly over.
And you never know when the National
Guard's gonna be flying the F-16s or
the A-10s.
So just something to keep
in mind if you're gonna
operate one of these, let's go.
Okay, so now there's two different
kinds of drones that are out there
primarily that are used in agriculture.
The multi-rotor quadcopters,
what we often times call them.
Most of them, you can see the pricing and
what goes along with most of these.
I know that the Mavic 2 it's out now,
it's replacing the Mavic Pro and
the Phantom 4.
Not too many people still
use the Matrice 100s
Symmetries 200 to 10 to
10 RTKR becoming more of
the standard platform if
you're using larger sensor.
But a lot of people really flocked to
the Phantom 4 pro Phantom four and
Phantom four Pro.
I've been using one for two years and
it's an absolute workhorse I've probably
flown Four or 5000 acres with mine,
and it's given me zero travel.
So you can kind of see the price points
that where you're gonna get in for
some of those.
And again, that's always changing.
Even as soon as I update this,
this list, everything will change again.
So this is really kind of
where we make our money.
When you start using the drones,
you start thinking about what
sensing options you're gonna use.
The blue, green, and red,
think of those as kinda,
that's your visible light,
that is what we see.
That's what every camera uses,
the blue, green and red light spectrum.
That's what's in your cellphone,
it's what's in your iPad,
digital camera, even the camera
here in my laptop is an RGB camera,
or what we refer to as an RGB camera.
And that gives you that nice
what we call an orthomosaic.
It's basically it's like
looking at Google Earth and
it gives you that real live
picture of what you have there,
so you can see in nice
bright colors what you have.
Now the other popular
ones that most people
are gonna use are gonna be NDVI and NDRE.
Now, NDVI, Normalized
Differentiated Vegetation Index,
that's gonna use,
if you look over here to the left,
it's gonna use the blue green,
red and Near InfraRed,
that NIR, and
that's gonna take a special sensor.
Those sensors can range anywhere
from $1500 up to 20,000 and
then you gotta have a different
bird to put them on.
And then the final one is
Normalized Difference Red Edge,
that NDRE, and that uses red-edge.
Now, if you think about if you
have visible light here and
Near InfraRed over here,
that area right there in the middle,
that line right between the two of them
that's where you get your red-edge.
It's just barely on, it's right there
on the verge of visible light but
veering into that Near InfraRed spectrum.
And then that Near InfraRed can also
include things like thermal and
that's something we don't have that
I haven't done too much work with.
But we're starting to get more into that,
if you're looking for
temperature variation within vegetation or
soil,
which can tell you some different
things about moisture content.
Orthomosaic again, that's that two
dimensional image, standard RGB camera
it's like looking at Google Maps,
it gives you that eye in the sky look.
You can look at this image and
you can see that there's something going
on right through the middle of the field,
kind of from left to right,
going from the middle of the field
down to the right bottom corner and
you can see that there's some
different things going on there.
As you look at that, or
as we start to think about NDVI,
that is just again, that's just
the difference in your vegetation and
they've got a standard between one and
zero that's how they rank that.
But if you look at
the diagram the Near InfraRed
gets subtracted from the red spectrum,
which is then divided by the Near InfraRed
value plus the red spectrum.
So for this image,
we're gonna take the 0.5
minus 0.8 divided by 0.5 plus 0.08 and
gives us an indication of 0.72.
Which is gonna say we got a little
bit more photosynthetic activity than
the other side, which has only got 0.14,
being on the lower end of that spectrum.
So, with that in mind,
we can also introduce different
algorithms based on whoever
software we're actually using.
In this instance,
the two pictures on the left were created
with a program called DroneDeploy.
The two images on the right were
created with a program called Botlink.
Now, the ones on the left is
they are using just a standard
RGB camera,
which does not give you a true NDVI.
Their algorithm is called VARI and
we'll look at that here
in just a couple minutes.
It still gives you enough information,
both in the orthomosaic and
in the plant health map, where you
can see that there's some areas that
you might wanna go look, especially if you
don't have any history with the field.
Now, if you have history with the field,
you're gonna say yeah,
I kind of expect that, no,
I really wasn't expecting the other.
But same thing the picture on the top
right is a true Near InfraRed picture.
Normally, the darker the red
the healthier the plant,
the lighter the red, not quite as healthy.
So you can see in the lower right
image that there's a little more red
in some of those places, I think both
of those are hillsides actually,
so you can kinda see what you got there.
And again, the Near InfraRed is gonna
reflect higher on a healthy leaf,
which you can see on the right,
as opposed to a dead leaf where
nothing really reflex well.
And that's the whole thing about
using these different cameras.
Again, I've said earlier
in the presentation that
the coloration on the plants is
gonna be a little bit different,
but this is what tells
the story of the field,
is we're looking at that reflectants
through different cameras.
Again, we'll go back and
look at the different orthomosaics,
we've got one from satellite,
we got one from a Near InfraRed picture
and then this one from a drone.
And as you look at that you can start
to tell some differences here you can
kinda see where the tile lines are.
The tile lines really
pop on the Near InfraRed
that's what most of that is right there.
But the one thing that
the Near InfraRed and the satellite
doesn't show you,
if you look at the UAV orthomosaic,
up there in the top left corner
you can see a light green patch.
Now, this is all 9 foot corn right here
and what you don't see is that light green
patch was actually 10 foot ragweed
that the producer had in this field.
And then the horizontal lines back and
forth he ended up having a knife on
his 28 applicator that was plugged.
He ended up having 400 acres like that, so
he kinda pays attention to
the imagery that he has now.
Again, we can look at the different
NDVIs or plant health maps,
and you can start to really
see some differences.
Now, on the satellite, again, you can
really see where the tile was at and
where it had good drainage and you can
start to see that a little bit on the true
NDVI with the airplane and it's a little
fuzzier on the UAV plant health map.
So to kind of cap all these,
the NDVI is that normalized difference,
the vegetation index.
And with you could see again
where the satellite and
airplanes really utilize the pictures
from that near infrared light
spectrum other than the weedy areas which
were really seen better from the UAV.
And then that UAV plant health map
was using what they called VARI,
Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index.
Again, it's a green, yellow, red map.
Now here's the dirty little
secret that not all red is bad.
So you look at this and
you see red, green, yellow, okay?
In this case, yeah,
the red areas were marginal areas
that really needed to be looked at.
But the airplane and
the drone kinda match up a little bit
better than what the satellite's telling.
But if you think about,
if you have two different hybrids and
you split your planner,
you're actually gonna get
two different coloration's off
of the two different varieties.
So again, red is not always bad,
it just means it's different.
So that's where our good
works of mosaic is handy and
you can take a look at that too and
see where you need to go scout.
Sentera is a producer
of different sensors.
You can get their single sensor mounted
to just to a Maverick or a phantom.
You can get the the double
4k which has its,
you can get an RGB and near infrared or
near infrared and red edge.
So it's a true multi spectral camera.
And you can kinda see the pricing there.
None of it is really, really cheap, but
if you fly a lot of acres you
can do some different sensing.
You can really start to see the value
in your purchasing options.
And I think in favor of time,
we're gonna skip past some of this.
We did an AMS, we've been doing
AMS trials across the state.
[COUGH] For those of you who don't know,
that's ammonia sulfate.
There's been a bigger push
here in the last few years to
start adding sulfur to soybeans and
to your corn.
You can see back in 2001,
before the Clean Air Act really got going,
how much sulfur pollution
was across this area versus
2015 where people started
cleaning all that up.
So different areas,
this is a field at the Northern Indiana
that was on the center pivot.
You can kind of see the two strip,
two strips right through the middle of
the fields that are circled
where they put sulfur in.
Normally, it gives it a little deeper
green to kinda let the nitrogen
get utilized more
efficiently in the plant.
Again, you can see the two dark
strips with the light strip in
the middle that are circled.
The strip in the middle didn't
have anything applied to it,
whereas the other two did.
This is from Tipton County.
We compared no AMS versus AMS applied.
At the time of testing the pods
were an inch long in the applied
versus three quarter of
an inch in the not applied.
This is that same field
from up in the air.
We just had some different issues and
most of the light green is,
That's more water damage
than anything else.
So I'm gonna skip through this and that.
We're using them for
conservation structures.
This is a grass waterway.
Think about how handy it would be
to be able to go out there and
just by flying be able to see what
the contour of that channel is.
You can see here that that
it's not quite uniform but
the guy had not mowed that recently.
When they went back and mowed it, you
can see you've got a nice channel there.
So NRCS could use this to
look at channel depth and
make sure that different
conservation structures
are still within specs for their programs.
Think about the severe
weather we had last year.
Shelby County got quite
a bit of hail last year and
it just pulverize this field down there.
And you can see in the bottom left and
in the top right, that's where it
didn't get hit near as bad as it did right
there through the middle of the field.
So again, you can start to assess
damage for like crop insurance.
We use them for insurance,
utilities, business entities that you
wouldn't think of like infrastructure,
doing inspections on power lines,
doing inspections on bridges,
or buildings where it would be
more difficult for people or
more dangerous for
people to be involved with if
they would have to rappel down
with a rope or climb something.
We can do volume calculations for
gravel companies.
This image right here,
the soil was impacted really heavily
with a lot of compaction when they
did some work to this utility tower.
And this is a better example.
This utility tower, they ended up breaking
a tile line when they were in the field
and it flooded out that much area.
Now if your a crop insurance and
you gotta figure that out,
it's a lot easier to fly it with
a drone and find out that you
got 4.79 acres total as opposed to just
going out there and trying to guess.
So we use them for aquaculture.
We put tilapia in this pond and
let them eat the algae all year long.
And you can see from July to October
that they really clean that filled up,
or that pond up.
This was in Southern Indiana where
farm ponds are really important
to livestock producers.
So cleaner water means healthier animals.
And then once the water got
cold you can have a fish fry.
So what's next?
Where are we going with all this?
How much money do you wanna
spend on your sensor?
A thermal camera can run you
anywhere up towards this $50,000.
A good lidar camera can
run you up to 150,000.
So, I mean,
you can put a great big camera on a drone,
it doesn't necessarily mean it's
gonna give you the results you want.
You need to have a plan in mind for
what you're gonna do.
So if you have questions on that, feel
free to reach out to Purdue Extension.
I really feel that we are leading the way
in the Midwest as far as UAD technology.
I like this slide because
it kinda poke fun at any
of the Indiana fans that are out there.
So I hope you don't take that personal,
but we just do it for fun.
But the one thing that I want
everybody to be able to bring
home is that just because
you've got a disability
doesn't mean you can't get out and
do what you need to do.
That's a picture of me on the right,
I'm sitting with the lieutenant governor.
She's actually flying one of my drones.
And I use them every day.
I'm paralyzed from my waist down.
And I use it on my farm,
my family farms 3500 acres.
We use them all the time for
crop scouting.
We use them to get out and
work with people on the livestock side,
to check fence, check the livestock,
check the forage, check the water.
You can make quite a bit of money
if you want to start a business.
Well, I'll come back to that.
The business opportunities, crop scouting,
you can charge anywhere
from $1 to five $5 an acre.
Insurance inspections, you can do upwards
of $25 an hour, photography same.
Infrastructure inspection,
if you're good and
you get in with your local utility,
you might be able to charge
as much as $250 per hour.
If you're into making movies
you can make 50 to 70.
If you're in the military,
I've heard upwards of 110,000 a year.
So I mean, I'm not trying to
give unreal expectation, but
there is money that can be made with this.
So the technology allows us again,
a manual flight allows that person to see
the the crops from a bird's eye view.
You can find tile, erosion, or
water, stand issues without
getting out into the field and
knocking everything down.
You can do planed flights, you can use
stitching software to make nice maps.
We haven't even talked about some of
the technology that's coming out with
the sprayer drones.
Purdue has one of them.
We're still learning how to use it.
We're still trying to figure out
licensing to get to where we can do
aerial application with pesticides for
different applications.
Like if there's a wet hole in
the back of the seed field on a year
like this where we got it planted late.
And there's weeds coming on and
you don't want all that water in.
So you can go back there and spray.
You can get them with a fertilizer
rather than the spray tank.
And you could go back and
spread fertilizer with a cover crop and
fill that water hole in with cover
crop and choke the weeds out.
So I mean, they're useful for orchards,
or vineyards, or small plots.
Just like I said, the sky's the limit,
and we're still learning.
I know that Paul's going to shut me
off here in just a minute or two.
So summing it up,
drones have many applications.
There's several that are available,
there's different sensing of it,
options that are available.
And the technology brings
faster value to the producer.
And there's so
many options out there that really we're
still just trying to figure it all out.
So my closing thoughts are if
you have an interest in this,
number one, make sure that you
check out the licensing process.
For instance we have designed a class,
it's a hands on class.
So it's not over technology
like we are today.
But we basically get you to the point
where you're ready to sit down and
take that test.
We also introduce different applications
too that the drones can be used for.
And the number one thing there
is make sure you get licensed.
The second thing that you need to do
is make sure that your drone fits your
application.
There's no sense going out and
spending $25,000 for
something that tou can do with
an 1,800 to $2,000 drone.
If you don't need true MDVI,
the best thing to look for
is just that standard RGB camera.
You can get a lot of information just
by flying a drone up in the air,
taking a few pictures of your field and
just see what you've got.
Again, it gives you that bird's eye view.
And then the last thing that
I would like to touch on,
make sure that you have insurance for
your UAV.
Because if heaven forbid if that
thing falls out of the sky and
hits somebody and kills them.
The average lawsuit,
it's gonna cost you about $6.5 million.
So make sure that you have
enough liability insurance,
just in case something happens.
And with that,
I'm gonna turn it back to Paul.
And I'll be happy to entertain any
questions that you wanna throw at me.
>> Well, thanks so much, Mark,
for that informed presentation.
I know I learned a lot of things.
Just a lot of aspects to this area that
you may not think about right off the bat.
One thing I did want to mention that
Mark has also been a member of our
Indian AgrAbility Advisory team for
quite a few years too.
So we appreciate his input in that area.
There is our first question for Mark.
>> Okay, the FAA licensing,
we always get that kinda confused
to call it the FFA license.
The price of that is $150 to take the
test, and that is every time you take it.
So if you take it and
you fail it the first time,
it's gonna cost you $150 the second time.
And that does not change
from state to state.
That is the federal test.
So when you get the license,
that is a federal license.
It's good from, if I live in Indiana and
I go to Ohio or Kentucky or California or
anywhere that license is still good for
a drone.
Okay, the drone that I'm
using is the Phantom 4.
And I picked my Phantom 4 up for
$600 off of eBay.
And it comes with three batteries,
a nice backpack,
everything that I need to fly.
That's going to be subjective to
whatever is going to work good for you.
For my indoor presentations,
I use what they call a Mavic Air.
It's just a smaller
version of the Mavic Pro.
And that one was $1000
when it first come out.
You probably can get one now for
7 or $800, but
whatever you're gonna use is,
whatever you decide to use,
it's probably gonna cost
something different.
And I know it's gonna be.
That this is my Phantom 4 that I fly, and
it's just got the standard camera on it,
right here.
And that camera is just
a red-green-blue camera.
I use a program called Drone Deploy and
it's a subscription.
For $1,000 a year,
I can create that nice orthomosaic,
and I can create that
nice plant health map.
And then it also gives different options.
If you wanna create 3D images, so
if I wanted to do a 3D image of my house,
or one of my barns, my grain leg and
bin setup, I can do that.
So it all just depends on
what your application is.
And there,
I'm not promoting drone deployment,
I'm just saying that's what works good for
me at this time.
But I'm also using a fixed
wing bird that costs $6,000.
And if you want the software for
that, it's proprietary and
strictly for that bird, and
the cost for it is $150 a month,
plus like $0.30 an acre that you process.
So the pricing really
varies between companies.
Not having to be able to see
the drone when you fly it.
Well, you pretty much well said it
right there is if you're gonna fly it,
you have to be able to see it.
I note that there's a lot of people that
like to get the goggles and fly on for
what they call FPV, first-person view.
Or where you'll fly off the iPad,
whatever you see off the iPad.
And I find myself doing that at times.
But when I do that,
I have a visual observer with me to
make sure that the airspace is clear.
Because if you’re flying on the googles
and that bird is two miles away,
you’re going to be seeing
exactly what the camera sees and
you’re not going to be able to see that
airplane that’s coming into your airspace.
You may not be able to see
everything that's around you.
Now, even if you're pivoting,
and swiveling, and looking up,
looking down,
you're still going to miss something.
You might not see that eagle
that's going to come down and
take out your drone, and it does happen.
So you said it right
there in your question.
You have to be able to see
the drone when you fly it,
just for safety purposes.
>> I had a question that just came
in through the chat, it disappeared.
I'll have to get it.
>> I can see it.
>> I'll grab it here.
>> Okay, I'll answer the one you put up.
You showed satellite images,
how do you order satellite images for
specific geographic areas?
What are the approximate cost?
Okay, that's gonna depend on who you use.
I was using Climate Corporation's
field view,
that's what we use on our farm.
So again, I'm not promoting them,
promoting Enirca through Pioneer or
anybody else.
That's something that really,
you'll have to do a little bit
of research and
see what works best for you feel you.
Field View,
I think it's about $1000 a year.
Again, I don't know what Encirca is,
and that might be part of Granular now.
I know there's some other's out there
that are available that give even
better resolution than that 30 feet.
Some of them are down to about
a couple inches or sub-inch, but
I know that those
are a little bit more minor.
Exactly what those are,
I couldn't tell you.
>> Okay,
our question in the chat that came up.
How often do you have to
renew your FAA license?
Is the applicant also required to provide
TSA Transportation Safety Authority
background check fees?
>> You have to retest every two years.
So I took my my test
back in October of 17.
So really I need to start thinking about
renewing my license before October 31st.
So if I don't get renewed by then
it will expend that license.
So every two years, and again,
that's $150 to retake the test.
No, you do not pay for
a TSA background check.
That just something they do.
Once you take the test you actually
log in to the FAA website, the website
they give you, and you create a profile
and you apply to it through that.
And they'll do your background check,
and it all takes about six weeks before
you'll actually get your licence,
assuming that you pass.
>> So Mark,
we're right at the end of our time.
Did you want to give a closer
view of the drones you have?
We talked about that I can go ahead and-
>> Yeah.
>> I'll exit out of this and
I'll show a bigger picture of you there
if you like to hold up your drones here.
Little higher, there we go.
>> That right there is
what they call the Tello.
It's about two inches.
It's not great big but
we use these in our indoor programming and
teaching people how to fly.
You hook it up to your your smartphone.
And the reason we use these, it looks
like something you'd get at Walmart.
But this is actually got the technology
in it that when you turn it on,
it'll sit there and hover.
It'll take off and
it'll hover and just sit there.
It won't like crash into the wall just
randomly and it's got a camera on it.
It's not only gamble but
it's still a 4K camera and
I think it's like eight megapixels.
So it's still a pretty good camera.
But again, that's the Tello, T-E-L-L-O.
About 100, 150 bucks, but
it's a good entry level.
If you just something for the kids.
This is the Mavic Air
that I was talking about.
The camera is on a gimbal, I don't
know if you can see it moving or not.
But what makes this thing nice,
it's small, it's about ten inches,
well, eight, not even ten inches.
And you can see my hand versus
the size of that thing.
But it's nice because its got
obstacle avoidance on the front.
You can see that here and
on the back here.
And then on the bottom, that's what
all the different little eyes are.
And again 4k camera,
I think it's a 12 megapixel camera.
So it takes really nice pictures and
video, but
I use that on my indoor programs mainly.
Kids love it because I can fly
it would just hand movements and
showing you know just some of the
different fun things you can do with it.
And then I also have also showed the M4.
This is not the Pro, but
it still has right here you can see
it's got the little eyes on it.
It's got the eyes on the bottom.
But that is the obstacle avoidance.
This guy right here has flown
several thousand acres, and
I've had no trouble with it at all.
So you don't have to spend a lot of
money to get involved with this.
But it does take a little bit of
time to get through the test and
get that license and
kind of figure out what you need.
And if you have any questions, feel free
that you can always send me an email.
I don't know, Paul is it okay
if I share my email with them?
>> Sure, definitely.
>> If you want to you
can reach out to me at
C-A-R-T-E-2-6-4 @Purdue.edu.
I don't know if you wanna
put that up on the screen.
>> Just stuck it in the chat.
>> T-E.
>> My bad, sorry.
Should be at carte264@purdue.edu.
And feel free to shoot me an email.
I'll be more than happy to talk with you,
or
answer any questions that you might have.
There you go.
>> Okay, well, thanks again, Mark.
Appreciate all that great information.
We're gonna archive this on our website.
And thank you to everybody
that joined us today.
We will be looking forward to hopefully
seeing you on our next webinar in a couple
months.
Have a great day.
