Flight Date: 9 Aug 2022
PIC: R Pearson

The XAG drones are designed to take crops right through their growing cycle from sowing the seeds to spreading fertiliser and treating with plant protection agents.

Getting the drone set up takes a matter of minutes. With safety always at the top of the agenda, Andy first checks the blades for signs of damage by running his fingers over their edges.

Then he drops in a battery, checking that it’s locked into place and turns on the drone.

While the drone initialises and connects to the satellite networks, Andy sets up the RTK base station. This is what gives the drone it’s centimetre accurate navigation capability.

Before each flight, Andy tests each of the motors in turn. Although he’s flying over his own land in a remote part of the country, safety always comes first.

Then Andy is ready to plot his trial field. He uses the RTK enabled controller to mark the corners of the seeding area. This accurate map is saved and will be used for all future crop treatments, saving plenty of time.

And 5 minutes after arriving in the field, Andy is ready to get the Oil Seed Rape crop sown.

From this point onward, the drone works fully autonomously. Andy has pre-set its flight height and application rate.
In this case it was 3 kilos per hectare which meant the drone has the capacity to cover a 7-hectare field with a single load.

If you look closely, or freeze the video as the drone transitions between runs, you can see the tiny Oil Seed Rape seeds as they are scattered, but you’ll need good eyes.

The drone followed it’s automatically generated flight path with centimetre accuracy despite a reasonable breeze as you can see from the turbines in the distance. This ensures a regular seed distribution across the whole field.

Once the flight is complete, the drone automatically returns to its take off point and 20 minutes after arriving at the field, Andy has got his Oil Seed Rape seed sown.

Now we just need the rain to arrive!

свернуть