Swiss mini drone producer senseFly has joined AgGateway, becoming the first UAV manufacturer to join this non-profit consortium of businesses that serve the agriculture industry.

As an official AgGateway member, senseFly has already joined AgGateway’s Precision Ag Council. This will allow the company to collaborate closely with other council members to help define appropriate standards, guidelines and implementation protocols, which will, in turn, improve the integration of UAV data into the precision agriculture workflow.

The invaluable market feedback that AgGateway membership provides will also help senseFly further optimise its technology to match the evolving needs of the industry.

“With the launch of our eBee Ag this summer we took a great first step towards meeting the scouting requirements of farmers and crop consultants,” says Jean-Christophe Zufferey, CEO of senseFly. “We then achieved a new level of integration with the arrival of the multiSPEC 4C camera, which was co-developed with agronomy specialists Airinov and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). Joining AgGateway is now the next logical step. We look forward to contributing our insight and experience to the Precision Ag Council so that this group can help farmers do more of what matters: accurately assess and manage their crops; increase yields; and grow their businesses.”

The eBee Ag is a mini mapping drone that can collect aerial photography of up to 2,470 ac (1,000 ha) in a single automated flight. These images are transformed into high-resolution orthomosaics (2D maps) by the eBee Ag’s supplied image processing software, which features an index computation tab for calculating NDVI and other indicators – to show which crops require treatment or closer examination. (The maps this software generates can also be imported into third-party farm management software for further analysis and to optimise treatment prescriptions before exporting these to other precision agriculture equipment.)