Agrowing Develops New UAV Sensor for the Future of Agriculture

UAV Sensor: Agrowing Ltd. is a leading provider of award-winning high resolution, high quality multispectral sensing solutions in the world. Such solutions make autonomous AI detection and identification in the field of various agricultural abnormalities, which brings the aerial precision agriculture sensing to a higher level for the future.

Although Agrowing’s “AI-enabled, 12 narrow band multispectral sensor with 12 megapixels per band” caught the attention of the media at the Commercial UAV Expo in 2019, their new sensor has catapulted this technology to another level.

This new UAV Sensor has the following impressive features:

  • 14 Narrow Bands of 8 Megapixel per band.
  • Imagery of 1.7cm per pixel ground resolution from 100m altitude.
  • 0.5mm per pixel from 3m altitudes.*

This new UAV Sensor is thus able to create many more opportunities in agriculture.

This 14-band sextuple lens of 8 Megapixel per band multispectral sensor provides numerous advantages, even though the key differences have to do with image quality and practicality/usability.

The 1.7cm per pixel ground resolution from 100m altitude that Agrowing’s new sensor can capture is impressive when compared to others that capture merely 4.2cm per pixel. This means that it has a dynamic range that is twice as long as previous ground resolutions, and because the lenses are adjacent to each other, the sensor can also acquire imagery from a short distance. This saves workers from having to guess what kind of disease or pest they might have to deal with in the field.

The Agrowing’s U.S. patented multispectral Sensor Design and patent-pending Imagery Acquisition Method, then, is not only the only viable way for non sampled scanning of fields, but they also make it possible to gain an extremely close view of the outlying areas of concern.

Ira Dvir, Co-Founder and CEO of Agrowing, pointed out that this new sensor makes it possible to accurately identify things, such as nutrient deficiencies and type of weeds, which is an advanced ability compared to what was previously relied upon by NDVI. By utilizing aligned multispectral data from both low and high altitudes, growers can take advantage of AI machine learning and classification. Doing so will allow growers to take efficiencies in agriculture into a new era.

Dvir explains further:

“The main problem with NDVI is that you need to go into the field and verify the analysis assessments . . . . In many cases, one can’t reach specific points in the field where one can drive a pickup truck into a corn or cotton field. The ability to bring life-size leaves in multispectral format to the service provider or agronomist means that every spot in the field is approachable. NDVI is the past and the present. Aerial leaf-level AI is the real future.”*

The ability of such sensors makes the future become a reality!

“Agrowing’s U.S. and EU patented sensor design utilizes Sony’s Alpha 7Riv modified full spectrum camera body with its impressive Full-Frame 61.2MP CMOS sensor, combined with high quality multi bandpass filters. The sensors, therefore, “avoid the serious limitations of the state-of-the-art multi-camera sensors, by having low distortion 21.6mm focal depth optics of fixed F5.6, combined with the sensor’s superior dynamic range, single mechanical shutter, and innovative sub-pixel accurate continuous digital alignment of the spectral bands.”*

With this equipment, growers that previously might have had 50 different zones and points of interest in a 100Ha field, can now capture and use data in an entirely new way. The AI analysis of 250 pictures (5 of each zone) can now be done in the field by supplying data to the growers who can put it into action.

Dvir told Commercial UAV News:

“A family farm of 100Ha could have its own drone package, but we are looking for service providers like SeeTree, which is doing wonders with our sensors in California and Brazil . . . . Agrowing’s sensors can be used with manned aircrafts to cover far larger fields and forests.”*

Agrowing collaboration with academic institutes around the globe, like the Rochester Institute of Technology and UNESP (Sao Paulo), make it possible to provide the best multispectral sensor for fast and accurate AI identification of pests, diseases, and nutrient deficiencies.

Future

Agrowing’s development of the New UAV Sensor clearly brings the aerial precision agriculture sensing to a higher level, and thus has catapulted this technology to another level for the future in agriculture

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