Whilst those of you in the USA await regulation to allow flight, other countries are pushing forward.
Project URSULA (UAS Remote Sensing for Use in Land Applications) was launched by Welsh Assembly Minister for Rural Affairs, Elin Jones. The 2 year research and development programme will explore the potential for advanced remote sensing, using small unmanned aircraft, for use in land applications, primarily high input arable farming. The project is supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.
Comments
Hi Rory,
is there any word on hyperspectral in the project description?
Looking at the flying wing they are going to get multispetral at most...
Meaning the result will be something like standard NDVI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalized_Difference_Vegetation_Index).
Not bad but "brand old" :-)
As said before the project looks like something that has ben done many times before... It´s just something you get funding for at the moment: New concept gathering environmental data.
Let´s hope there is a real result on the regulatory side.
Reading through the homepage (http://www.projectursula.com), the government is only supporting. It´s a commercial project.
The science regarding precision agriculture has been topic of many, many studies... The real use failed of several reasons like usability... No farmer wants or can use the UAS-systems or can hire an engineer full time. Additionally he needs to upgrade his tractors with GPS controllable tools and so on. I´ve been involved in some projects and you get struck by farm reality pretty fast :-)