Seeding drones is so smart, is the flying hand better

Agricultural drone pilot: More like an agricultural manager
Agricultural plant protection drones have realized fully automated operations earlier, and in recent years, RTK (which can achieve centimeter-level positioning) has almost become standard. The pilots no longer need to always hold the remote control, but they also began to learn more and more in-depth agricultural knowledge, and began to use more other smart agricultural equipment, some people describe the current plant protection pilots more like agricultural managers.
In 2017, the author once followed the local service team Hewen Technology to the farmland in Inner Mongolia, when they organized about 50 DJI Agriculture’s MG-1S plant protection drones to prevent and control red ants in an emergency, and at that time the pilots were mainly standing on the roof of the car with a remote control. But now, the situation has changed a lot, said Li Yao, CEO of Hewen Technology, and drones have realized the automation of farmland plot measurement, plant dynamic monitoring, and intelligent fertilization. As a result, the requirements for a pilot’s ability to fly are now reduced, but the requirements for software operations, route planning, etc., are increased.

In addition, Li Yao also mentioned that now the pilots have to do far more than control drones, drone automation is not the final form of agricultural plant protection, so we need to understand more modern agricultural knowledge. For example, since its establishment in 2016, its team has been committed to intelligent whole-process agricultural services, agricultural technology training, comprehensive straw treatment and other businesses, and has basically formed a complete business closed loop. The next step is to do real-time monitoring and analysis of the plot through multi-spectral and hyperspectral, and feed the results back to the UAV. The UAV then uses the information received to achieve variable fertilization, so that agriculture can truly reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the cost savings in agriculture will be more than 50% in principle. The future agriculture will also use a large number of remote sensing information, such as climate monitoring, yield assessment, disaster damage assessment, seedling monitoring, in the sky, space, and ground multi-dimensional escort for agriculture…
Wang Yongzhong, general manager of Guangxi YikeyXueyun Agricultural Technology Co., LTD., who is skilled in fruit tree flight prevention, said that most of the fruit tree flight prevention operations now also rely on automatic flight, and only some need to manually and automatically cooperate. However, it is still not easy to become a fruit tree flying anti-flying hand, and now the flying technical requirements of the flying hand are indeed lower, but the professional requirements are very high, and a lot of agricultural knowledge needs to be trained. The flight prevention of fruit trees is very complicated, and the flying hand needs to adjust parameters according to the flexibility of the branch, the age of the tree, the size of the crown, etc., and the operation mode of fighting different diseases and pests is also different.
Industrial drone pilot: to be reliable, but also know a lot
Industrial drones have also realized automation earlier, and a few years ago, pilots played a role mainly in the take-off and landing stage. Industrial drones now operate more autonomously, making it easier for pilots to get started, but there is more to learn about flight, loads, and so on.

Hu Songtao, a senior pilot who is now working at Yuandu Technology, said that the flight control technology is now lower than before, the overall threshold is lower, and it is too simple to be an entry-level pilot; However, the experience and the understanding of the drone must be high, and it is too difficult to be a “reliable” pilot.
He introduced that now the UAV take-off and landing are basically automatic, uneven field requires manual intervention. Pilots now spend most of their time observing flight data, route planning, load operation, maintenance inspection, and emergency operations (manually cut if necessary), but poorly considered route planning (which may lead to collisions), emergency operation errors, lax pre-takeoff inspections, and failure to identify sensor anomalies will all lead to “explosion.”
When a reliable industrial-grade UAV pilot should have a sense of responsibility, know more about various models, have a little understanding of structural design and pneumatics, the basic skills of manual control aircraft should be solid, the project experience should be rich, the ability to think independently can deal with sudden problems calmly solve, to be able to judge whether the state of the UAV after lift-off is normal, but also to train as a lecturer…
In addition, the pilots who do business and projects should also combine the aircraft platform and supporting loads such as (single light, double light, three light pods) to do targeted load operations; As a pilot of a UAV research and development enterprise, I also need to have the experience of writing test feedback reports, defining software and hardware to make it more convenient…
Aerial pilots: to conceive the language of the shot, but also to reduce the risk

In contrast, the automation of aerial photography drones is relatively late, but in recent years, various auxiliary functions of “one-click shooting” have been realized. But in order to shoot well, the experience of the “old driver” is still very important.
I often take aerial photos in the evaluation or out of the interview, personally feel that in recent years, the aerial camera is indeed easier to get started, some “cute new” colleagues can also fly under simple guidance. But at the same time, simple aerial shots have become difficult to wow others, and they must be more creative and aesthetic. I also have to admit that although the same drones are used, senior pilots can always take more amazing shots