senseFly drones in agriculture

Eveli Sisas

AlphaGIS

senseFly

senseFly pioneered professional drones in 2009 and is world leader in fixed-wing drones

Founded in 2009

#1 used mapping drone

Lightest in class

20,000,000 ha mapped to date

• High precision on demand(RTK/PPK)

• Weights approx. 1.1 kg• Up to 59 min flight time• Up to 40 km2 max coverage

• Wind resistance up to 45 km/h (12 m/s)• senseFly S.O.D.A. RGB camera• eMotion 3

eBee Plus RTK/PPK

senseFly S.O.D.A. Parrot Sequoia thermoMAP

Fly

Analyse

Plan

Simple E2E workflow

• Hand launched

• Fully autonomous

• Highly precise landing

• No accessories

required

Pix4D

ArcGIS

AutoCAD

Agisoft

Airware

MicaSense

& many more

eMotion

• Mission block flight planning

• Full 3D environment

• Shapefile import

• 1 mission, multiple flights

• Export to cloud

eBee Plus applications

Surveying Quarries, aggregates &

mining

Remote sensing/researchUrban planning & land

management

Forestry/GIS

Earthworks/monitoring

Spectral signature of plants

Near infrared (700nm – 3μm)

Parrot Sequoia sensor

Reflectance map vs Orthomosaic

Reflectance Map Orthomosaic

optimized for radiometric accuracy perband usage of as many images as

possible

optimized for esthetic quality, file size,speed usage of as little images as possible

Green

Spectral analysis

Calculate Indexes

Reflectance Maps

Index as PointShapefile

Index as Polygon Shapefile

Index as TIFF or JPEG

Green

RED

NIR

RE

NDVI =NIR - RED

NIR + RED

What can I do with an NDVI?

Simple Ratio = NIR/Red (Jordan,

1969)

• Several studies show a high correlation between leaf area index (LAI)

• Consider crop stages

• Optimized Soil Vegetation Index (OSAVI)

Applications:

• Evaluate plant stands

• Gauge canopy development

• Helps with replant decisions

• Typically correlated to yield

• Not a silver bullet!

Using thermal data

• Thermal data is related to transpiration of a plant

• Hottest part of day, early morning is not good

• Sensitive to leaf area

• Cloudy or windy issues

CWSI = (dTm − dTLL)/(dTUL − dTLL)

(Jackson, 1981)

Applications:

• Irrigation management

• Soil moisture

• Moisture probe placement

Fully Irrigated

50%

Stress

40%

Stress

senseFly Agriculture

1. The drone is a tool to help solve problems, not

the end-goal in itself

2. Flying senseFly vehicles is the easy part

3. NDVI is not the solution to every crop issue

4. Advanced algorithms cannot replace local

agronomic experience

5. You can’t avoid getting your boots dirty