Trimble Adds UAS for Ag to Its Offerings



By Danielle Lucey



Sunnyvale, Calif., company Trimble announced today that it has added the Trimble UX5 unmanned aircraft system to its product portfolio aimed at agriculture for aerial imaging and mapping applications. 



The UAS can be used for monitoring crop health, looking for diseases, pests and other issues. The company says the system can also be used to monitor animals on the farm, locating cattle and finding foraging areas. 



"The addition of the Trimble UX5 system strengthens our agriculture product portfolio and enables us to provide a solution that benefits a broad range of customers including growers, ranchers, water management contractors, agronomists and other ag service providers," says Joe Denniston, vice president of Trimble's Agriculture Division. "High-speed aerial imaging is a powerful tool that can quickly and easily locate problem areas to be addressed. The faster a problem area is discovered, the better the chance it can be evaluated and resolved before crop yield is impacted."



The system flies at 50 mph (80 kph) and can fly for 50 minutes, typically covering an area around two square kilometers at two-inch resolution. The images the system gathers are georeferenced and show elevations using a dense 3-D point cloud.