Drone Applications

Although this was not a commercial job, a friend asked if I could help him determine if newly installed field tile had corrected a drainage problem on his 30 acre farm. The first image shows a satellite image of his field from a time before the tile was installed. Note the troublesome wet area at the middle left area of the field. Using a surface mapping application to control the drone, a series of images were obtained while autonomously flying a pattern above the field. The pattern was programmed to ignore the house and garage at the top right in the image. The flight took less than 15 minutes. Play the video to see the pattern that the drone flew while a total of 48 pictures were taken looking down on the field. Stitching software then blended all the images together and the result was the composite image. Ignoring the diagonal tire marks, one can see the rows of tile which run vertically the length of the field, connected at each end. The wet area appears dry now. The image serves as a permanent record of tile location. In Spring, the process could be used to determine if tiles are working or plugged. During the growing season, the process could show the relative growth of crops in the field, perhaps indicating what areas require more or less fertilizer. Although no video was recorded for this project, it would have provided a nice tour of the farm.