AI Weed-Killing Drones to Reduce Herbicide Use While Cutting Costs

For the past three years, Terry Aberhart has watched the spindly, fixed-wing drones zip across the big skies above his farm in Canada’s Saskatchewan province, testing a technology that could be the future of weeding. Fitted with an artificial intelligence system, the drones are designed by local startup Precision AI to spot, identify and kill the weeds without drenching the entire crop in chemicals. Continue reading →

Marine Biologists use Drones to Affix Suction Cup Tags to Whales

A team of marine biologists affiliated with several institutions in the U.S., working with a colleague from Mexico, has found that it is possible to use drones to affix suction cup tags to whales as an alternative to doing it manually. In their study, reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group tested the use of an uncrewed-aerial-system-based tag deployment system with free swimming whales. Continue reading →

Teledyne’s Thermal by FLIR Program Expands with US Drone Makers BRINC and Teal

Teledyne FLIR, part of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, has announced continued momentum within its Thermal by FLIR program for small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), highlighted by the integration of its Hadron 640R dual visible-thermal payload within the recently announced Teal 2 drone and the Lepton 3.5 thermal micro camera within the BRINC LEMUR 2. Continue reading →