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Jan. 9, 2015 BrownfieldAgNews reports: An unmanned aircraft systems operation is the first to be granted a regulatory exemption by the FAA to do crop scouting. Advanced Aviation Solutions, in Star, Idaho, plans to use a fixed-wing unmanned aircraft to make photographic measurements and provide services that support precision agriculture. The business was founded by Steve Edgar. "Essentially we're just going to provide you a geographical point on your property where you have stress, and then you'll need to go out and see what that stress is and take care of fixing it," said Edgar, from his home in Idaho Thursday. "We all know it's either fertilizer, a weed or water, some sort of basic stressor to the crop." Armed with that information, Edgar says corrective action can be applied in fields to either conserve inputs or increase yields. "And thus, basically, put some savings into that bottom line so that you can increase your yields and decrease your costs," he said, "so you get a little bit of a double benefit there." Edgar, an ex-fighter pilot and military UAV operator, thinks that agriculture will be the first major industry to employ UAVs, because it's done in less populated areas and in less traveled air traffic areas. "The natural fit to expand the technology in agriculture is there for a number of reasons, but one of them is safety from the FAA side, so we see agriculture as the leading edge of the development of the technology," said Edgar. The FAA has received 214 requests for exemptions from commercial entities; 13 have been granted for various commercial applications. Tweet |
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