{"id":8893,"date":"2020-08-04T21:15:37","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T21:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2020\/08\/25\/high-tech-farming-drone-research-supports-organic-efforts-at-local-farm\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:34:17","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:34:17","slug":"high-tech-farming-drone-research-supports-organic-efforts-at-local-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/high-tech-farming-drone-research-supports-organic-efforts-at-local-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"High-tech farming: Drone research supports organic efforts at local farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

A drone may not be the first piece of equipment you\u2019d associate with organic farming.<\/p>\n

But a new Furman research project demonstrates that cutting-edge technology has its place on the pasture.<\/p>\n

Andrew Freeland \u201921 is conducting research in precision agriculture with Greenbrier Farms of Easley, South Carolina. He\u2019s using a drone equipped with a Multispectral camera, which Furman purchased this summer through a grant from South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities and additional support from the John M. Garihan Endowed Fund.<\/p>\n

Each snap from the drone\u2019s built-in camera system is composed of six images. Software weaves the images from hundreds of shots into a single large photograph. These photographs can then be used for reference as base layers for other data sets, such as soil samples, as well as to assess intra-field differences in pasture health and productivity.<\/p>\n

Because of COVID-19 campus restrictions, Suresh Muthukrishnan, professor and department chair for earth, environmental and sustainability sciences, piloted the first summer flights while Freeland worked with the data at his home in Nashville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the images I\u2019ve produced, you can see differences,\u201d said Freeland, who is eager to move back to campus in mid-August and fly the drone himself.<\/p>\n

Muthukrishnan first used a drone for a class several years ago in a freshman seminar that examined the ways generations of humans have pursued seeing things from the skies. From there, he began to incorporate drones into his Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class and to use them for research.<\/p>\n

In GIS, \u201cwe plot information and try to make more sense of the data by looking at the geographic patterns and trends over time,\u201d Muthukrishnan said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the pictures. We can convert the photographs into data and then we can use the data for decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeland has had a personal drone since high school, but it was a hobby until he started to realize it could be much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot more responsibility than a video game, but it is a controller with two joysticks and buttons and a screen in front of you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With the new drone, Freeland and Muthukrishnan can program a flight path, and the drone will fly itself, taking hundreds of pictures as it goes. They also use a GPS ground station that provides centimeter- to millimeter-level accuracy for the data collected.<\/p>\n

Freeland created flight plans for the research site, tested them with his own drone at a Nashville site and then sent them for implementation at Greenbrier.<\/p>\n

The new drone has six built-in cameras which take photos in full color, only blue, only green, only red, near infrared and middle infrared wavelengths. These wavelengths are specifically selected to study vegetation health and stress. When the photographs are \u201cstitched\u201d together, photo after photo, they reveal patterns and issues that often wouldn\u2019t be detectable from the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can identify the plant stress before it\u2019s visible to the human eye, we can address the stress appropriately,\u201d Muthukrishnan said. \u201cHow can we tweak things around where the production is a little less than optimal and make it better?\u201d<\/p>\n

Using sophisticated algorithms, the same photographs can be used to calculate total amount of biomass or crop yield. For small scale farmers, raising cattle or goats on these pastures, that\u2019s crucial information that equates to meat production from the animals.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s much more than just farming.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgriculture is not the only application,\u201d Freeland said.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Andrew Freeland \u201921.<\/p><\/div>\n

Drones are part of infrastructure inspection, parcel delivery, forest management, traffic monitoring and more. In developing countries, \u201cdrones are frequently being used to send blood samples or critical vaccines to remote villages as well as for relief operations during major disasters,\u201d Muthukrishnan said.<\/p>\n

He said the demand for trained drone pilots and researchers is only going to grow as more industries and organizations find ways to apply the data drones can collect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are going to fill the sky, whether we like it or not,\u201d Muthukrishnan said.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The images captured by six different cameras onboard the research drone in different wavelengths to help study pasture conditions.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A drone may not be the first piece of equipment you\u2019d associate with organic farming. But a new Furman research project demonstrates that cutting-edge technology has its place on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":18759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}