NAUST Robotics upgrades agriculture with autonomous drones. The main problem we are solving is bird damage on farms, which can easily be 50-70% if the land is close to the water. As current bird scaring techniques are ineffective in the long run, farmers are exposed to damage, losing over 50.000 EUR per 100 Ha (wheat fields).
We solve this with an autonomous drone flying over the fields, equipped with speakers. Emitting special sounds that birds recognize as danger, we will push them out of the crops, back to natural areas where they can feed without conflict. A landing platform laying on the field will recharge and shelter the drone, allowing the whole system to operate autonomously. Furthermore, the user will be able to check the real time status and modify the settings from our mobile app!
Additionally, in the future we aim to equip special cameras on the bottom of the drone to collect high quality periodical images for crop monitoring practices. This will lead to save time and resources for the farmer, such as tons of chemical pesticides thrown to the field without knowledge.
Our vision is to implement affordable autonomous drone solution to automate simple tasks and save time for society.