Drones are used in many ways in agriculture and forestry. Imaging drones can be used to monitor fields during the growing season, and crop index maps can be used to draw conclusions about crop health during the growing season. Areas on the crop index map that differ from the rest of the crop can be caused by pests, for example.
Fertiliser drones, on the other hand, help with precision fertilisation. In forestry, drones can help detect and monitor forest damage. Drones can also be used to fertilise forests. Finland’s weather conditions are no obstacle to the use of drones.
“Aerial spraying of pesticides is not allowed under EU legislation, which prevents the use of drones for such work. For other work, drones can be a great help in agriculture and forestry,” says Aleksi Kärnä, a researcher at the Oulu University of Applied Sciences.
Drones also offer many new possibilities for different types of agricultural and forestry measurements. Camera-based sensors, for example, can view a target from better angles. Drones can also carry measuring instruments and thousands of measurements can be taken during a single flight. Measurement data can be combined with the drone’s location data, allowing the results to be visualised on a 2- or 3-dimensional map.
Artificial intelligence has great potential
Aleksi Kärnä is involved in research projects to find out how drones can be used more effectively. The price of drones has come down in recent years, and today the one-off cost of drones suitable for agriculture and forestry is in the range of a few thousand euros. Compared to the cost of buying a tractor, for example, this is a small investment. It is important to know what kind of equipment you are going to buy and if it is really worth the investment. A drone is not the answer to every problem.
“We are exploring the use of drones to identify wild oat from the fields in collaboration with an AI company. We are still analysing the data and are investigating, for example, whether the image data collected by the drone is of high enough quality for the AI to process,” says Kärnä. Improving the identification methods of wild oat is indeed economically important, as it causes millions of euros in losses every year in Finland.
Business conditions vary regionally
Researchers at Oulu University of Applied Sciences are currently exploring the conditions for future drone business:
“When we study freight transport in rural areas, we find that the drone as technology works, but the problems of profitability have not been solved. In practice, drones are a good transport option when you can’t get there by car. In a country like Finland, such places include archipelagos or flooded areas in spring,” says Aleksi Kärnä.
A drone can help in situations where a component needs to be delivered quickly or without it, the site is at a standstill. In practice, if a forestry machine breaks down and a spare part is needed on site in difficult terrain, a drone could transport a spare part to the site. A drone could also bring medical supplies or products in emergency situations when lives are at risk. The key question is how to make drone logistics profitable.
“There are very diverse regions in Finland with different business conditions. In addition, the legislation is still rigid. In the future, it would be interesting to see the emergence of regional contractors in drone business using their existing networks and creating new business models in rural areas,” concludes Kärnä.
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