There are a growing number of options for green-on-green herbicide spray application technologies available to farmers. Companies like John Deere, BASF and Bilberry are using artificial intelligence and advanced computer vision to develop green-on-green spot sprayers, some of them capable of functioning autonomously.
What about an autonomous, green-on-green spot sprayer that flies? It might sound far-fetched to some, but Saskatchewan startup Precision AI is hoping to deliver a machine like this to the market as soon as next year.
Precision AI is calling its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) the “world’s first artificial intelligence-powered agricultural drone for plant-level herbicide applications for broad-acre field crops.”
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This UAV isn’t a quadcopter like many ag drones. It’s a substantial aircraft, two metres long and with a wingspan of seven metres. It’s also fast, flying more than 70 kilometres per hour as it whips over fields two metres above the ground.
The drone is powered by a hybrid gasoline-electric engine, which provides up to two hours of flight time. It has two sets of rotating propellors that enable the aircraft to take off and land vertically, so no runway is required.
Precision AI’s UAV carries a 20-litre tank for pre-mixed herbicide solutions, and it has 18 spray nozzles spaced 25 centimetres apart along its wings.
Because of its large fixed-wing design, it can work in moderate wind conditions (winds up to 25 km/h), although it is recommended to spray at winds below 15 km/h, or as indicated on herbicide product labels to avoid issues associated with chemical drift.
Precision AI is currently performing flight tests in Maricopa, Ariz. This spring, the company shifts further north for a second year of testing in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba, where the focus will be on canola, wheat, barley, oat, pea, lentil, chickpea and flax crops.
“We are building a solution for broad-acre commodity crops, and where you find those in Canada is in the western provinces. We are not currently servicing orchards or high-value crops,” says Warren Bills, head of marketing and commercialization for Regina-based Precision AI.
He adds testing will also take place this year in the midwestern states of Iowa and Illinois, where the focus will be on corn and soybean crops.
The company’s founder and CEO, Daniel McCann, came up with his notion for the drone when he was cleaning out his garage. McCann was attempting to develop a system that could use AI and computer vision to auto-list his discarded items on eBay when he realized how efficient the model could be for identifying plants.
This led McCann, who grew up on a farm near Regina, to start his own company in 2017 with the idea of creating AI drones for fully autonomous farming. Bills says McCann has launched other tech startups before, but Precision AI is his first ag venture.
Interest in Precision AI started building soon after that, and in 2021 the company received a $20-million cash injection from investors. “We secured one of the largest tech seed rounds in Canadian history through private venture and public funding,” says Bills.
Core technologies
Bills notes the investment funds were used to develop two core technologies. One is the drone’s high-tech see-and-detect system that enables it to spot weeds in a green crop in real time.
With a resolution of 0.5 millimetres, the UAV’s precise image sensors can distinguish between individual plant species, and all of the AI image processing is done on board the UAV through edge computing technology, so there’s no need for the drones to connect to the internet.
The second core technology is Precision AI’s unique platform for aerial spot spraying. Bills says the company didn’t set out to invent a drone capable of precise herbicide applications at first, but it turned out to be a necessary step.
“A lot of the drone sprayers in the market today simply don’t have precision capability. They’re quadcopters and they have a lot of prop wash. This just doesn’t allow you to get down to a very precise level when spraying, so the seed funding was used for some of the early phases of that,” says Bills.
“There’s a lot of software engineering as well as mechanical engineering going into building the spray payload to hit those targets.
“There are different ways of doing this from a drone. We’ve looked at some of the innovations from the other spray drones doing broadcast applications, but there are some elements that are unique to our fixed-wing precision spray drone.”
Bills notes many of the innovations in the green-on-green space rely on cameras and sensors mounted on the booms of high-clearance sprayers.
“We’re doing something similar, but we’re doing this six feet above the ground using drones. And we’re doing it at speeds that are four or five times as fast as what a high-clearance sprayer can drive and spray at,” he says.
According to Bills, Precision AI’s UAV can provide a more consistent imaging data set because the equipment isn’t attached to a boom that bounces up and down.
“Our drones are a lot smoother,” he says, adding aerial spot spraying can also eliminate the yield hit associated with compaction from tires or tracks in a field.
Bills notes the see-and-detect side of the drone is in the beta phase and Precision AI has working models capable of performing in fields and producing weed maps as a service for customers. The plan is to have them available in limited release in 2024.
The spot spraying from a spray drone payload is about three-quarters of the way through the R&D phase, Bills says. He adds significant progress has been made in this area. And as the Precision AI team moves ahead with further R&D, the company aims to take flight in 2024.
One of the challenges is that herbicide spraying from UAVs is not approved in Canada. However, Precision AI is on a committee to advise Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) on the necessary changes required to allow herbicide spraying from UAVs.
“It’s not quite there yet,” says Bills. “What they’ve done in the U.S. is essentially if (a herbicide) has got an approved label for aerial applications like a crop duster, then it can be sprayed from a drone. That would be our preferred path that PMRA would take.”
The United States has fewer barriers to bring drone spraying to market since it already has a regulatory framework in place that supports drone spraying.
“As Precision AI gets closer to pre-commercial launch of our UAV solution, we will look into both the Canadian and U.S. markets for the best timing based on both regulatory and technology readiness,” he says.
Generating buzz
According to Bills, Precision AI’s drone has received a positive response from farmers.
“What farmers are telling us is the overuse of herbicides is a big problem for them. They know they’re spraying bare ground, but they really have no other way of doing it. They have a very strong appetite for any technology that reduces the herbicide load on their fields because they can save money and they can sustain as good of a yield and weed control,” says Bills.
“The other thing is there’s a bit of fatigue in high-clearance spraying. Many farmers own their own sprayers, and it seems like they’re the most highly used piece of equipment, hardly ever shutting off between all of the herbicide, fungicide and insecticide applications. It’s just go, go, go,” he adds.
Bills says farmers are interested in a solution like Precision AI’s UAV, which could take some of the pressure off of, and supplement, the work being done by traditional sprayers on farms.
The drone has also caught the eye of one of the biggest names in ag — John Deere. In January, Precision AI was named one of eight companies to take part in John Deere’s 2023 Startup Collaborator program. The green brand launched the initiative in 2019 to help John Deere enhance precision technology in its agriculture and construction equipment.
“It’s a great bit of recognition from what I think is the largest agricultural brand in the world,” says Bills. “John Deere is constantly scouting for organizations that might offer something they can learn from, and they chose us.”
The program will enable his company to tap into the John Deere legacy of engineering and marketing expertise and receive some invaluable mentoring, says Bills. It’s also an opportunity for Precision AI to showcase what its drone can do at demonstrations on John Deere test farms.
“This provides us with that access inside of John Deere to get some questions answered,” says Bills. “And then, of course, from a John Deere standpoint, they get to spend time with us and see just how unique we are in what we built.”
Being named to John Deere’s 2023 Startup Collaborator program is just the latest accolade for Precision AI, which racked up numerous honours for its drone in recent months.
Awards include the 2022 Drone Technology of the Year award, which Precision AI received from the international organization AgTech Breakthrough Awards in August.
In October, Precision AI was named Rising Star of the Year at the 2022 Edge Awards, which recognize excellence in hardware, software, platforms and applications for edge computing.
Precision AI’s precision spray drone system also took home the Farmers Choice Award at the Agri-Trade Equipment Expo held in Red Deer, Alta., in November.
In February, BloombergNEF, a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy, named Precision AI as one of the finalists for its 2023 BNEF Pioneers Award.
The finalists will be judged according to three criteria — their potential effect on greenhouse gas emissions and environmental sustainability, their degree of technology innovation and novelty, and their likelihood of adoption and potential scalability, with the winners to be announced in April.
