In the European Union there are 13.7 million farmers and around 15 million farms. In global comparison they are facing with the problem of worsening efficiency originated from the increasing costs of production. A viable solution for them can be the application of precise farming technologies.

 

Our objective is to create a complex system that can contribute to the increase of efficiency and the decrease of usage of resources (water, chemicals) in the field of agriculture, horticulture and viticulture by the application of the latest technologies.

 

The hardware part is a fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can sense remotely the agricultural area with its small-size on-board sensors according to the type of the plant or the analysis. It is challenging that the UAV needs to be compact and easy operating (even by a farmer), its size and its capacity need to be in accordance with the type and the size of the farm. Due to the various requirements of the users different performance levels are set that could mean different UAV designs: multicopters, planes and planes with vertical take off and landing (VTOL) capabilities.

 

The software part is composed of data collecting, management, analysis and decision support subsystems. First the software running on the UAV hardware collects and stores the data. These data should be easily downloadable from the UAV and can be automatically processed on a laptop or on a desktop computer. The type of process depends on the type of the analysis which depends on the type of the plant and the applied sensors. The data processing should be autonomous and easy-to-use too. The results of the analysis can be the base of the decisions of the farmer. The results can be integrated (e.g. digital maps, GIS data) to existing precise farming application or machines (e.g. intelligent sprayer or fertilizer distributors) by which the information becomes physically implemented.