Agriculture
Drones are the future of agriculture. From crop evaluation and mapping, to spraying and spreading drones are making farming easier and more effective.
We procure complete Drone Precision Agriculture services including RGB, Thermal IR, and NDVI imaging. Efficiency and accuracy in monitoring large crop fields are significantly important in the farming industry. Problems with crop health can be identified and therefore resolved more quickly to prevent or minimize damage and maximize yield.
Quick topographic land contour surveys provide data for irrigation design and spot issues with irrigation coverage and locations of leaks.
Identify specific locations of plant health issues early such as fungal and pest infestations and improve crop load estimates to make better management decisions.
Leveraging our expertise in aerial imagery, multispectral data collection, and crop spraying for precision agriculture, Volare Drone Innovations empowers farmers and the agricultural community to optimize their practices for a more environmentally sustainable future. Using cutting-edge drone technology, Volare Drone Innovations can quickly and efficiently collect visual and multispectral data over hundreds – and even thousands – of acres per day, providing our agricultural clients with critical information to identify crop issues at an early stage, monitor crop growth, optimize nutrient utilization, and make informed decisions that lead to successful and profitable crop yields.
Spray & Spreading
Traditional methods, such as crop-dusting aircraft, are quickly becoming outdated with high costs and imprecise application, leading to the unnecessary exposure of healthy plants to pesticides. Volare Drone Innovations drone-based crop spraying services utilize advanced imaging and multispectral technology, including infrared and red-edge sensors, to identify and target specific areas of crops that require treatment. This precise application significantly boosts efficiency, leading to optimal resource utilization and a reduction in the overall amount of product required, aligning with consumer preferences for reduced chemical usage on their products.
This combination of enhanced efficiency, optimized resource utilization, and reduced chemical usage through precise drone-based application represents a significant advancement in crop maintenance and treatment. Our crop spraying service not only benefits farmers by improving crop health and reducing costs, but also meets the demands of environmentally conscious consumers who seek products with fewer chemical residues.
For generations farmers have walked their fields inspecting crops manually for signs of stress, disease, and vigor. Irrigation management, crop inspection, spraying of pesticides, all use traditional labor-intensive methods, which are time consuming, and can be difficult as crop canopies thicken. Using Drone technology, farmers can now evaluate their crops at scale, while simultaneously creating vegetation maps that help them manage their crops – and their time – better.
Drones are being utilized in all facets of agriculture, but one area that is relatively new to Canada is aerial spraying and spreading. Our commercial spray drone can cover multiple acres per hour, and increase efficiency and precision. Drone application can be used in areas where other methods are ineffective or unavailable.
We can spray or spread in areas with urban encroachment, varied topographies, and limited accessibility. Volare Drone Innovations has a Special Flight Operate Certificate for heavy spray drones, allowing us to offer compliant drone crop spraying services for precision agriculture clients on a national scale and I controlled airspace.
We can spray or spread:
- per hour 21.3-hectare spraying, 11 m (relative operating altitude 2.5 m, flight speed 7 m/s), 6 L/min
- per hour 1.5 tonnes of fertilizer spreading, Solid dry particles with a diameter of 0.5 to 5mm.
Crop trampling by tire wides 10” to 15” is approx. 3% this means a lost of C$12.50 per acre. Drones do not trample crops.
We are currently utilizing our drones for the following applications:
- Pesticides
- Fertilizers
- Nutrients
- Seeding
- Beneficial Insects
We provide end to end solutions for all crop types, including identification, evaluation, and application.
2-D and 3-D Mapping
Mapping is the perfect tool for farmers and ranchers who want to get a detailed look at their land. You can create topographic models of your fields, determine crop height, water pooling, and identify risk areas. Mapping makes it easy to optimize your land for agriculture production.
Real time drone maps allow for more accurate crop monitoring. While satellite maps may be out of date, drone maps provide an up to the minute look at potential problem areas. This leads to an effective IPM plan.
Volare Drone innovations produces extremely accurate models of landscapes and structures using 3D point-cloud and mesh models.
Drone surveying is a fast, accurate, and cost-effective alternative to traditional surveying. Drone usage drastically reduces the time spent collecting data, and a single flight can produce millions of data points that would take a team of humans weeks to gather. Not only is this method far more efficient and cost-effective than older forms of surveying, but the safety risks involved in surveying are drastically reduced – less time in the field means that there’s less risk to surveying teams in steep or unstable areas. We can apply georeferencing techniques to create standalone thermal maps and orthomosaics that combine both conventional photographs and thermal images.
Do you need to create a 3D model of your project, site or structure? Drone mapping and survey is the perfect tool for the job. Our drones can quickly create a detailed map of even the largest sites. So whether you're planning an investment or just want to show off your work, our drone mapping and survey service will get the job done quickly and professionally. With Orthorectified imaging, you can easily create 3d Maps of your project. This allows you to plan and design more effectively, and also provides a valuable marketing tool for promoting your work off-site.
Crop Monitoring
Data Insights
Volare Drone Innovations provides unique insights to vegetation growth, and our crop and plot trial research programs deliver timely, and accurate assessments based on high-resolution aerial imagery that can only be obtained using sensors flown at low altitudes by unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or “drones.”
Monitoring Field Conditions
Volare Drone Innovations provides unique insights to vegetation growth, and our crop and plot trial research programs deliver timely, and accurate assessments based on high-resolution aerial imagery that can only be obtained using sensors flown at low altitudes by unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or “drones.”
Keep your crops healthy and thriving with our Crop Monitoring service. With regular updates on your crop yields and health, you'll be able to ensure that your crops are in the best possible condition. Measure crop counts and Soil Temperatures to get a complete picture of your crops' health Mapping can be done at any time during the crop cycle, regardless of field conditions or accessibility. Field maps can then be used by an agronomist to prescribe treatment.
RGB & Multispectral Imaging
RGB & multispectral imaging allows access to different indices, such as measure of irrigation, detection of nutrient deficiencies, and identification of areas affected by pests, weeds, and disease.
Monitoring Plant Health
Have you ever wondered if your crops were healthy? Wonder no more with NDVI scans from the air! This technology detects indicators of plant health invisible to the naked eye, so you can be sure that your crops are getting all the nutrients they need. Utilization of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) allows for evaluation of photosynthetic activity, biomass, plant and soil moisture, and plant stress.
- Improve irrigation efficiency
- Optimize fertilization plans
- Forecast yields more accurately
- Identify plants to be culled
- Target pesticides applications
- Improve field labor deployment
Aerial-based thermal imaging has also become an important tool for agricultural management. It is a non-invasive way to monitor crops, nurseries and greenhouses and even detect plant disease.
Aerial assessments and data gathering within the farming sector provides key information such as:
- Plant Vigor
- Plant Stress
- Plant Counts
- Field Uniformity
- Plant Height
- Other Variables
This information can be used to predict the need for fertilizer inputs, irrigation modifications, peak harvest, overall crop health, and ultimate, crop yield/value. Industrial farmers can now leverage these technologies, since they allow for better business decisions relating to agricultural issues.
Plant Vigor Assessment & Identification
This information can be used to predict the need for fertilizer inputs, irrigation modifications, peak harvest, overall crop health, and ultimate, crop yield/value. Industrial farmers can now leverage these technologies, since they allow for better business decisions relating to agricultural issues.
- Quickly identify area of stress
- Review ground-truth with your agronomist
- Convert agronomist diagnosis into an action plan
Drone Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
Determine the health of surrounding vegetation.
Active Drone Solutions pilots perform NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). NDVI is useful in a number of industries and the sensors help Agriculture, Construction, and Oil & Gas projects assess their impact on the surrounding vegetation and determine its health. By using near-infrared light to measure spectral reflectance off of plants, NDVI sensors can provide a quantitative index of vegetation greenness or vigor.
Farmers use NDVI's to assess the health of their crops, determining which areas might require more water, fertilizer, or pesticides. Construction operations can use NDVI's to measure the operation’s impacts on nearby vegetation. Understanding how they are affecting the nearby vegetation is extremely important in reclamation efforts.
Keep your crops healthy and thriving with our Crop Monitoring service. With regular updates on your crop yields and health, you'll be able to ensure that your crops are in the best possible condition. Measure crop counts, H20 Levels and Soil Temperatures to get a complete picture of your crops' health.
Clorophyll
Plants will often exhibit signature characteristics when they are stressed, thriving, dying, blooming, or infected. These signatures may not always be visible to the human eye; however, they will usually have a strong correlation to the content of chlorophyll within the photosynthetically active regions of plants. Healthy plants normally have greater chlorophyll content in their leaves than unhealthy plants.
Near Infrared & Red Edge
Plants with high amounts of chlorophyll within their reflective structures will reflect a greater percentage of near-infrared and red edge light wavelengths emitted from the Sun than plants with lower amounts of chlorophyll. Therefore, in many cases, the amount of reflected near-infrared and red edge light that is reflected off a crop can be used as a marker to help quantify characteristics associated with the health of a plant.
Golf Courses & Parks
Mosquito Control
Mosquito control programs are tasked with surveillance and targeted control of nuisance mosquitoes and potential vectors of pathogens (e.g., West Nile virus, Zika virus) that cause disease.
Ideally, mosquito control personnel find and target mosquito egg-laying sites to kill aquatic immature (e.g., larvae) mosquitoes before they emerge as flying blood-feeding adult females. Different mosquito species lay eggs in different locations where standing water is present. Egg-laying sites can be ephemeral (e.g., woodland pools dependent on rainfall patterns or tides in brackish salt marsh environments) or permanent (e.g., retention ponds). In other cases, egg-laying sites can be provided by human activity (e.g., tires dumping sites).
Data on occurrence and abundance of adult mosquitoes monitored via trapping (e.g., CO2-baited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention light traps) as part of a surveillance program can help mosquito control personnel develop control plans. Personnel must have knowledge of mosquito biology (e.g., egg-laying sites, flight range) of certain mosquito species in order to control potentially dangerous or nuisance mosquito species. In remote areas (e.g., salt marshes, crop irrigation fields), larval habitats may be difficult to find and/or access, and this can hamper control efforts. Hence, mosquito control operators are turning to high-tech tools to help with reconnaissance of mosquito habitats and, in some cases, application of insecticides.
Our Thoughts
Learn all about what’s new at Volare Innovations.
September 4, 2023
Pictures from above make all the difference.
When one gazes up into the sky, what is typically seen are clouds and the expansive azure overhead. Now, imagine flipping that view and looking down from above – a perspective coined as 'aerial photography.' Not so long ago, this breakthrough method of capturing photographs was reserved for those who had access to expensive helicopters or airplanes. Today, with the advent of drones, this breathtaking perspective has become more accessible than ever. Indeed, drone shave revolutionized aerial photography.
August 3, 2023
The Economy of Drone Crop Spraying
As the clock ticks and technology evolves, drone technology has found a solid footing in the agricultural and forestry sectors. Read about some of the benefits of choosing drones for crop protection in the agricultural sector.