Picture of the Day: Korea’s Crop Dusting Drone
In this photo provided by the Yangyang county government, farmer Kim Kwang-seop sprays agricultural pesticides by using a drone on his paddies in the eastern county on June 8, 2015. Kim said he has completed the work in just five minutes with the drone, compared with more than 20 minutes with manual labor. The utilization of drones is on a gradual increase in the country’s agricultural sector. (Yonhap)
Before anyone thinks the era of industrial drones has arrived, whatever “work” that drone accomplished in 5 minutes is more gimmick than news.
The average flying time for most quadcopters on the market is a little over 20 minutes That’s with their standard payload of a camera and its mount. Every liter of pesticide that farmer wanted to carry is about an addition kilogram of weight. Hexacopters (6 props) and octocopters (8 props) have proportionally greater power.
BTW, when Amazon starts delivering packages by drones they’d better invest heavily in loss prevention security and insurance because those beasts will be expensive and highly desirable to drone-jackers.