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Skippy doesn’t require great piloting skills, automating the flight and flying the COTS drone to chose points in a field to send you high resolution, leaf level images. “Then Skippy analyses the captured images and sends you a field report, with % healthy crop, unhealthy crop, weeds and bug damage,” says Drone Ag. “The entire process takes minutes, not hours.”
Drone Ag Wins UK Grant to Develop Skippy Scout: Automated Crop Scouting with COTS Drones
by DRONELIFE Staff Author Ian M. Crosby
Drone Ag has announced the beginning of a brand new two-year project funded by Innovate UK with a grant of £610,000, which was conditional on raising not less than an equal amount from private investors. “I’m delighted that our grant funding has helped to derisk Drone Ag’s ambitious technology plans sufficiently to encourage further private investment,” said Innovate UK Program Manager Bruce Colley.
The funding will allow for the event of Drone Ag’s latest automated aerial drone-based system, which is designed to check and validate latest agricultural products and could have applications within the methodologies of each research and industrial trials. The investment was led by a consortium of partners which incorporates the Business Innovation Centre (BIC) alongside Innovation SuperNetwork (Newcastle Angel Hub), NorthInvest, Fund Her North and the UKBAA.
“We’ve supported Drone Ag from the beginning of their journey and are thrilled to assist them receive this grant from Innovate UK,” said Jordan Dargue, Head of Access to Finance at Innovation SuperNetwork. “The technology that Drone Ag are developing is ground-breaking and the funding goes to assist them achieve their goals of a faster more efficient plot evaluation automation. I’m looking forward to watching how this project unfolds over the following two years.”
“Trials programmes are in desperate need of innovation, as most monitoring remains to be done visually, manually, and in person,” said Ruth Mann, Head of Integrated Crop Technologies at Agrii.
With the support of industry leaders like Agrii, Eurofins Agroscience Services, and UPL, Drone Ag seeks to supply fully automated drone flights from on-site base stations. Its AI-powered evaluation and integration grant firms the flexibility to observe, assess and interrogate their trials with increased speed and accuracy.
“UPL are excited to see DroneAg’s solutions being applied to Research & Development trials,” said Graham Poulton, Global Head of Agronomic Digital Innovation Team at UPL. “We’re very supportive as we see many advantages to our own operations, including staff well-being. We hope in supporting this, others will even come to learn, which is aligned to UPLs OpenAg mission”.
“Crop research and development is a particularly vital consider moving agriculture toward infinite sustainability,” added Drone Ag founder Jack Wrangham. “We’re very excited to receive Innovate UKs backing, and support from Agrii, UPL and Eurofins to assist develop a version of the Skippy Scout platform that may revolutionise crop trials monitoring and evaluation.”
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