While drones have been used in Southeast Asian countries such as China and Japan to spray agriculture, the trend is also spreading to the U.S. and Europe, according to drone vendor Quaternium Technologies.
The increasing use of drones in agriculture is the result of the increased efficiency the technology brings to the process, saving time, money and other logistics.
Drone sprayers are equipped with the same parts as other traditional sprayers — a tank, a pump to push liquid through the hoses to the nozzles and a pressure gauge. Drones are mainly flown 2 m to 10 m above the crops and the four rotors create a specific turbulence in the air that helps to distribute the liquid uniformly. Four nozzles are positioned in such a way to allow for coverage of applied products, reaching hidden layers of crop. However, these sprayers typically carry only a limited amount of liquid at one time.
As such, Quaternium produces a drone with a one-hour flight time and that carries 10 liters of liquid. The HyBrix aerial system allows operators to fly for longer, covering more area than traditional drones that can only fly for 15 minutes and spray only a limited amount, the company said. The spray width is up to 6 m and the airframe resists rain and dust to increase effectiveness, the company said.
Quaternium said that while drones have not been used to spray large scale locations as of yet, the technology shows potential to change how agriculture spraying is done in upcoming years.
