Using drones equipped with AI for precision agriculture offers several benefits:

Enhanced Crop Monitoring: Drones can collect high-resolution imagery of crops, allowing for real-time monitoring of plant health, growth patterns, and pest infestations.

Improved Resource Management: AI algorithms analyze drone-collected data to optimize resource use, such as water, fertilizers, and pesticides, leading to increased efficiency and cost savings.

Precision Application: Drones can precisely apply inputs like fertilizers and pesticides to specific areas of fields based on AI-driven analysis, reducing waste and environmental impact.

Early Detection of Issues: AI-powered drones can detect crop diseases, nutrient deficiencies, and other issues early, enabling timely intervention and preventing yield loss.

Time and Labor Savings: Drones automate data collection and analysis tasks that would otherwise require significant time and labor, allowing farmers to make informed decisions more quickly.

Overall, drones equipped with AI technologies enable farmers to make data-driven decisions, optimize resource use, and improve overall crop yield and quality in precision agriculture practices.

Drones have RGB, NIR, RE sensors.

The images taken from the drones are analyzed on the computer in NDVI maps, and fertilizers, seed sowing, irrigation, etc. being applied.

Diseases and pests are detected in time.

Drones have multispectral and hyperspectral sensors, which are successful in more accurate detection and execution of operations.

First, you have to define each of the terms:

- Drone: unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) controlled by a remote or autonomous pilot

- AI: you have many types of AI models: classification, regression, clustering, etc. Also, many fields: computer vision, natural language processing (a trend nowadays), generative models, etc.

- Precision agriculture: use resources time and space efficiently. Although technology helps, PA is not about the use of technology in processes, but about the efficient use of resources.

So, how can drones and AI help in precision agriculture?

The easiest approach is to build AI models with drone/satellite/ground data to predict some variable of interest. For example, you can use drones to predict the yield of a crop, based on some vegetation index. This approach requires to process the data out of the drone, and then build the model. So this is not a "drone with AI equipped" case.

The second approach is use the drone with an AI model equipped, like a computer vision model to detect some feature of interest (like a disease in a plant, count fruits or even estimate the size of a tree using a depth model like MiDaS). This is complex, since drone hardware needs to be as powerful as a computer to run the model, and also the model needs to be lightweight to run in the drone

With this in mind, there are some benefits, like: saving time covering large areas in short time, save costs compared to HR satellites, get high resolution images, and be safe while doing it. But, you need to have in mind that drones are not the solution for everything, and you need to have a clear objective to use them.

Sunil Meghwanshi What are the benefits of using AI-equipped drones for precision agriculture?

The use of AI-equipped drones in agriculture brings many precise benefits such as:

Crop Monitoring and Monitoring: Drones with AI technology are capable of monitoring and tracking crops from above. This helps farmers identify problems such as diseases, water shortages, or pests early, so they can intervene promptly to protect and optimize crop yields.

These benefits of using AI-equipped drones in agriculture not only help improve efficiency but also help protect the environment and create a sustainable farming system.

What are some examples of precision agriculture based on ai?

Some examples of AI-based precision agriculture include:

These examples show that AI is revolutionizing precision agriculture by enabling farmers to make data-driven decisions, optimize resource management, and enhance crop yields while promoting sustainability. sustainability in farming practices. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vXJyjIohZlTcOqwsqhN9ucT84tu77jDiS7Ct19byWts/edit?usp=sharing

The Promise of Precision Agriculture Is Slowly Coming to Fruition

"Precision agriculture has long promised to provide more granular data — and new technology to use it — for farmers facing pressure to increase yields while being more environmentally friendly. It’s had some successes, but some of the loftiest promises of precision ag are still out of reach...

The precision tool of drone imagery is a good example. Drones can reveal if a crop is stressed or facing other issues that aren’t visible from the side of the road, said Jonathan Aguilar, an irrigation engineer and associate professor with Kansas State University.

“Some farmers have tried drones before and the way they saw it was, ‘It’s just another pretty picture,’” he said. “We are trying to make sure those pictures are actually information that they could make action out of.”..."

https://undark.org/2024/06/18/promise-of-precision-agriculture/