US farms have had to deal with a range of concerns including labor shortages, trade wars, climate change, water shortages and COVID-19. Despite these challenges, crop yields have increased and GHG emissions have decreased as a result of more efficient field management practices, new plant strains, environmentally friendly cultivation techniques and increased use of internet/broadband, where available. Precision Agriculture (PA) uses sensors, robots, and UAV to compile real-time data on crop, livestock, and equipment status.  In the absence of cell towers/Wi-Fi farmers deploy their own power network for PA use.  Though UAV have a proven operational track record, particularly with the military, their use in PA are hampered by government UAV pilot licensing requirements, limited range/payload capabilities, and operational issues (battery life, computing requirements, environmental effects).

Investigators have developed a collaborative approach for using multiple (e.g., swarm) UAV where airborne computational requirements are shared between individual vehicles and transmitted to a ground-based control station for assigning field tasks (plowing, seeding, weeding, watering, pruning, harvesting) to robots for more efficient, cost effective field management practices.

Competitive Advantages

• Allows ground robot usage in areas of no/limited cellular/wireless service
• Continuous airborne monitoring of field conditions by UAV results in near instantaneous data transmission to ground based robot fleet for targeted applications
• Shared UAV airborne/ground robot control station computing can result in decreased agricultural crop production costs

Opportunity

The global PA sector was valued at $5.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $14.1 billion at a CAGR of 12.7% by 2026.  The global UAV market including use of this technology in PA was valued at $45 billion in 2018. 

Rowan University is looking for a partner for further development and commercialization of this technology through a license. The inventor is available to collaborate with interested companies.