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Business Solutions

Agriculture & Forestry Solutions

DELAIR’s long history in agriculture and forestry has culminated in the UX11 Ag, a BVLOS ready drone with a specialized camera for mapping plants. Thanks to its unique BTOL (bird-like takeoff and landing) feature, it can be operated in virtually any agricultural or forest setting.

Unlike smaller multirotor drones, the UX11 Ag is adept and efficient when it comes to acquiring multispectral images over large areas. It even displays the images in real-time on the pilot’s tablet in both a visual RGB rendition and an on-the-fly NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). Equipped with PPK, a cellular connection, and a rugged design, the UX11 Ag is ready to fly in harsh environments.

The UX11 Ag is a capable solution for agriculture and forestry issues such as:

• Field trials
• Precision Ag
• Forest management
• Weed detection
• Plant and stand counts

The MicaSense RedEdge-MX camera found in the UX11 Ag is a multispectral camera that is commonly regarded as the best in its class. The resolution of the sensor allows you to distinguish and even count individual plants in row crops.

The Micasense sensor captures five spectral bands: red, blue, green, red edge, and near infrared. The red edge and NIR bands are known in academic literature to be a reliable proxy for plant health assessment.

Live display of NDVI, a bird’s eye view, and real time control over the camera and drone parameters allows the pilot to not only manage the flight, but to verify and ensure that high-quality data is being collected during the flight.

Everything works seamlessly and efficiently. Apart from the flight itself, the flight preparation and data export processes take less than 20 minutes combined.

Compared to a multirotor ag drone, the fixed wing UX11 Ag solution saves big on operational costs.

E.g. for plantation of 75Ha:
Multirotor solution 14.6€/Ha vs Delair Fixed wing 0.5€/Ha

E.g. for Precision Ag of 20 Ha:
Multirotor solution 14€/Ha vs Delair Fixed wing 2€/Ha

E.g. for field trial of 6 Ha:
Multirotor solution 17€/Ha vs Delair Fixed wing 6€/Ha

Data Capture
Solutions.

Plant and stand counts

The UX11 Ag can be used to count and identify the number of plants in a field, trees in a stand, or vines in a vineyard. In addition, the multispectral imagery can be used to identify sick or dead trees and vines, essential information for forestry and vineyard management.

Once stands are counted in row crops, planting rows can be digitized and spacing between plants measured.

Forestry analysis

In order to measure the success rates of forest plantations, the UX11 Ag can be used to monitor metrics such as the height and diameter of trees.

The Micasense camera in the UX11 Ag can also be useful for detecting diseases or water issues in a forest. While chlorophyll anomalies cannot be detected using basic RGB cameras found on standard drones, the UX11 Ag observes the specific red edge band required to calculate the NDRE (normalized difference red edge) index which is an indicator of the presence of chlorophyll in plants.

Precision Ag and MyJohnDeere

Thanks to the Alteia platform, data acquired by the UX11 Ag can be transferred directly to MyJohnDeere Operations Center. From there, layers can be uploaded to a compatible John Deere sprayer tractor or implement.
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