Kansas Highlights UAS
Use for Agriculture

Kansas State University Professor Kevin Price launches one of the school’s Zephyr II unmanned aircraft. AUVSI photo.

 

By Brett Davis

Officials from Kansas State University demonstrated how
unmanned aircraft can benefit agriculture, flying two types of UAS that can be
used for crop monitoring, pest evaluation, rangeland assessment and harmful algae
blooms.

The demonstration, held 2 July, was conducted at the state’s
Crisis City facility near Salina, which has various manmade and natural
disaster scenarios and is used for first responder training.

The KSU officials flew a homegrown fixed-wing aircraft the
school is developing as a commercial product for farmers and an off-the-shelf
Aeryon Scout quadrotor. KSU also demonstrated another student-developed
aircraft.

As AUVSI’s recent economic forecast indicated, UAS are
expected to have a huge impact in the world of agriculture, which is expected
to be the largest commercial market for the systems.

Kevin Price, professor of agriculture, nature resources,
remote sensing and GIS at the KSU Department of Agronomy and Department of
Geography, says it makes sense to develop low-cost systems aimed at farmers
because of the efficiency and cost savings they can provide. 

Such systems can be used to not only evaluate crop yields
but also do so much faster than traditional methods.

“We can tell them [farmers] which plots are going to be
their best-yielding plots” so they can focus on those and not waste time on the
others, he said.

Evaluating crops by foot can take 1,500 hours, whereas the
Zephyr II flying-wing UAS the school has developed can cover hundreds of acres
in minutes, while costing as little as $5,000.

Deon van der Merwe, head of the Toxicology Section at the
College of Veterinary Medicine and a radio controlled aircraft hobbyist,
modified a commercial RiteWing UAS aircraft for agricultural use. It employs a
commercial point-and-shoot digital camera, modified to shoot infrared imagery,
and a GoPro video camera.

“Our goal here is to build as inexpensive aircraft as
possible … so that farmers can get aircraft to monitor their fields,” Price
said.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran later joined KSU leaders and AUVSI
President and CEO Michael Toscano to highlight the demonstrations and the
impact unmanned aircraft are expected to have on the economy of Kansas.



Moran said Kansas is both the aviation state and “the state that feeds the world,” and noted that these two attributes come together in the form of unmanned aircraft.



He noted that he co-chairs the Senate Hunger Caucus, which advocates for food programs, particularly in emergencies, “but mostly my interest is how we apply technology to increase the production of agriculture, which is already very productive,” he said. “What can we do to feed and provide energy and clothing to a hungry world?”



He said one of his last earmarks in the Senate, before such practices fell out of favor, went to KSU to help develop the unmanned aircraft program. Moran said he hopes it will help train young technologists who can then keep their skills in the state.



The afternoon session included another demonstration of the Aeryon Scout, which flew a crop monitoring pattern at 150 feet altitude. Mark Blanks, the UAS program manager for KSU’s Applied Aviation Research Center, noted that about 20 acres were imaged a very high resolution in just a few minutes, with little drama.



“The point was, it is non-spectacular, and I’m proud of that,” he said.