BIOLOGICAL PLANT PROTECTION
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Modern agriculture is the fundamental requisite for global food supply and the agricultural industry is in constant struggle to maintain and increase crop yields.
Agricultural current challenges:
- Disease management and high level of chemical pesticides used result in loss of approximately 25% of the world’s agricultural output;
- Legislations on the usage and pesticide spraying in the vicinity of settlements deprives small farmers of the possibility to efficiently protect and save their harvest;
- The agriculture industry is supplied with large and generic machinery. Without specialized machinery isn’t possible to correctly monitor crops and offer a fast reaction to the control of the crop area, pests, and diseases and work process improvement;
- Extensive use of pesticides contributes to up to 50% of the honey bee population’s decline. Honey bees are essential for the pollination of crop and in turn, leads to weaker crop yields.
SOLUTION
Digital technologies and remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) offer the agricultural industry with new and effective solutions to safely protect, process and control planting areas.
FIXAR 007 agriculture package is designed to efficiently solve:
- Implementation of Bio-protection as a substitute for pesticides and chemicals. The introduction of natural insect-eaters – Entomophages (in particular, trichogrammas), i.e. protecting plants with a natural origin, makes it possible to process fast and safe any agricultural area;
- Effectively and accurately detect areas in risk of being destroyed by infections, weeds, or pests;
- Safer, faster, and cost-effective agriculture solutions tailored to meet unique needs based on the product and region;
- Boost productivity: FIXAR 007 can process a 60 hectares field in one hour and up to 500 hectares per working day (a single person would need a full month to perform the same job);
- Data collection for detailed analysis and monitoring using aerial photography in visible and multispectral modes;
- FIXAR 007 can be integrated with different types of payloads such as a dispenser for spraying, cameras for monitoring and collecting photo materials and data, etc.
Undertaking the above tasks, individually or combined, lead to increased yields, improvement of crop quality and, as a result – higher crop grade and a higher market value based on the yield quality of the ability to have an organic product.
CASE STUDY
FIXAR 007 agriculture drone package has successfully introduced biological protection on a 3150 hectares area (between 2018 and 2019). In the course of the field treatment, entomophagy was applied twice in the vicinity of settlements, making for the first time possible to safely preserve the harvest in the treated area.
RESULT
The introduced entomophagy destroyed 74% of the invasive pests in a single flight and resulting in increased crop health and safety.
BENEFITS OF THE FIXAR 007 AGRICULTURE PACKAGE
- FIXAR 007 agriculture package performs throughout all year and the investment pays itself by the first quarter;
- FIXAR 007 aerodynamic design allows a vertical takeoff and landing from/to unprepared areas with accuracy down to 2 meters;
- FIXAR 007 is fully autonomous during the whole flight thanks to a predefined flight plan. All photos are taken; automatically according to coordinates set and in a bioprotection distribution, according to the predefined flight route;
- Terrain recognition;
- No special skills or licenses are needed to operate the ground control base;
- High wind resistance – up to 12 m/s gusts;
- IP54 rated enclosure protection – protected against dust ingress that could be harmful for the normal operation of the product but is not fully dust-tight. It is protected against solid objects and water jets projected by a nozzle (6.3 mm) from any direction;
- Low maintenance cost.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODEL:
| Maximum take-off weight | 7000 g |
| Maximum payload weight | 2000 g |
| Wing span | 1625 mm |
| Maximum flight speed | 27 m/s |
| Cruising flight speed | 18 m/s |
| Maximum duration of flight | 59 min |
| Maximum flight range | 60 km |