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UC Davis Investigates Using Helicopter Drones For Crop Dusting
cylonlover writes "Researchers at University of California, Davis, in cooperation with the Yamaha Motor Corporation, are testing UAV crop dusting on the Oakville Experimental Vineyard at the UC Oakville Station using a Yamaha RMax remote-controlled helicopter. The purpose is to study the adaptation of Japanese UAV crop dusting techniques for US agriculture, but not all the hurdles they face are technological."
The non-technological hurdles are exactly what you'd expect - government regulations, air-traffic restrictions and (restrictions on) emergency landing procedures.
Doesn't really seem like a problem - except in california, where realistic, useful legislation rarely passes on a permanent basis.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
This sounds like a decent application- using GPS this could be completely automated.
love is just extroverted narcissism
..ten years ago - http://www.gizmag.com/go/2440/ and http://rmax.yamaha-motor.com.au/
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
hackers just wait for some to hijack one and crop dust over area loaded with people.
Then blame the bakers, who have been dusting pastry with sugar probably since the middle ages.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yeah, except the term was coined a long time ago when the insecticide being applied was in powder form, hence the "dusting" name.
We have all these amazing advances in technology, but all we ever want to use them for is surreptitiously farting on people. The world never changes.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
$1m en 1920 est $11.6m en 2013. Recherchez les faits avant que tu ecrivez, vous laide, odereux American fatso homme.
You are the low information demographic we all complain about. Please do not vote.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In California, you have to complete a two year apprenticeship to become certified for aerial application.
This is not so much about flying an airplane (which presumably a commercially rated pilot can manage).
It is mostly about handling pesticides, etc. I have not looked but my understanding is that other states have similar requirements.
So even if UC Davis proves the concept, I doubt it relieves the operator of being state certified.
I work for an Ag company in the Pacific Northwest and I can tell you that while there is a use for UAV technology in agriculture, it is not an end all replacement for spraying and other applications. It lacks the payload to be efficient with all farms, many are too large to be sprayed in total with such a small device. Also the article seems to vilify the tractorand current methods to a certain degree, when in fact precision agriculture has helped implement gps, autosteer, and autoboom technology (among many other things) into modern agriculture already and has drastically increased the precision with which we apply fertilizers and crop protectants. I also don't understand why we are wasting money on research for this particular device when it already has decades of use and data available, especially when looking at spray patterns from helicopters since those are already used for this application and have been for over sixty years. UAVs will be a great asset for mapping, collecting field data, and making applications to small crops, but it will just be another small tool, and is not the end all solution for precision ag.
Be aware that Monsanto's RoundUp herbicide is designed to exterminate all plant life except their GMO animal hybrids. It does this through its main component glyphosate interfering with the shikimate pathway present in all plant life, including the intestinal flora in your gut which is essential to human health and even survival.
Sure, flying just above ground level and jumping over water pipes and flying under power lines while crop dusting is fun and sexy ... but only if you avoid thinking about your role in the destruction of the biosphere.
There's a reason why we are currently living in the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. The single biggest factor is herbicides and insecticides, because they are designed specifically for destruction of local biodiversity, which unfortunately spreads. Deforestation and CO2 and global warming and all that jazz are barely secondary causes.
And when biodiversity reaches its tipping point, the whole house of cards that is the biosphere collapses. In case what this means is not clear to those who don't follow the bio sciences, it means no more you.
Don't cheerlead crop dusting.
Meh. These drones still have pilots, they're just not on board the plane / helicopter. A lot of the skills will be transferrable, and for those that aren't, there are always simulators. Pilots trained on nothing but video screens may be missing some kinesthetic sense of the aircraft, but I'd argue that that's not very useful for modern fly-by-wire passenger jets in any case.
I came across a few articles today that were "of interest to you". I read them, and inevitably, I scrolled to the comments.
Maybe I'm just intentionally naive, but some of the things people are willing to say to complete strangers online are absolutely appalling. I'm sure that I am as guilty as anyone at one point or another, but that's beside the point.
If anything, the Internet revolution that will be reflected upon in 100 years will be known as the time when we really began to discover the evils of the human soul.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Honestly, I don't buy into the "everything's coming up drones" hype for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Nobody's going to droneify a passenger jet, the safety calculus just doesn't work. But for aerial reconnaisance (police, traffic, news, search and rescue) with no cargo, the story changes. You can't make a useful manned aircraft that weighs less than half a ton or so, so you have to ask a new question:
If it's flying over your children, would you rather it weighed 2000 pounds or 2?
Safety's still an issue, of course, but I'd be willing to accept much less stringent safety requirements if the only consequence of a worst-case scenario crash was some bruising and a nasty cut that might need stitches.
It is awful, you're right. Which is why I save vitriolic invective for people who - like the guy above I was responding to - deliberately spout toxic BS. People who do that need to be called on it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Safety's still an issue, of course, but I'd be willing to accept much less stringent safety requirements if the only consequence of a worst-case scenario crash was some bruising and a nasty cut that might need stitches.
Ask yourself what the result of being hit with a 2lb drone falling from 500 feet is, and then try this comment again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
UC Davis spokesman, Mr Wesp Rays Tudents, clarified that using campus policeman to spray on protesting students sitting on the side walk provoked too many protests and parodies. They believe the urban remote controlled helicopter would be a more humane approach and protect the identity of the policeman doing the spraying.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"but not all the hurdles they face are technological" Wow, I really wouldn't expect that. /sarcasm
It's got wings and propellers to lower its terminal velocity and spread out the impact, so it's going to hurt a lot less than a 2 pound rock. It'd probably hurt as much as getting hit by a falling red-tailed hawk, and we let those suckers fly around major cities without flight plans or a pilot's license.
But regardless, I stand by my point: a 2 pound drone will hurt a hell of a lot less than a 2000 lb helicopter.
It's got wings and propellers to lower its terminal velocity and spread out the impact, so it's going to hurt a lot less than a 2 pound rock.
Oh, is that the bar? I try not to get hit with 1 or even 0.5 pound rocks from 500 or even 250 feet.
It'd probably hurt as much as getting hit by a falling red-tailed hawk,
Right, because the drone is flexible and covered in feathers. Wait, except it isn't.
But regardless, I stand by my point: a 2 pound drone will hurt a hell of a lot less than a 2000 lb helicopter.
I stand by my opinion that your point is irrelevant and fallacious as it is a false dichotomy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I understand this is probably a dull, dangerous job, but do we have to automate every line of work out of existence?
We have to automate every dull, dangerous job out of existence so we can free up the humans to enjoy their lives and focus on the creative pursuits where they really shine.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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