DRONES have become one of the key technologies of the 21st century and are used in many innovative ways from search-and-rescue operations to taking selfies.
Malaysia may not be at the forefront of drone technology but unmanned aerial vehicles are already being used by many organisations to carry out human tasks.
Braintree Technologies Sdn. Bhd. is one of the companies providing drone services to help farmers in the field. By using drones and geographic information systems, artificial intelligence and Internet-of-Things, the company plans to help Malaysian plantation industry develop further.
Braintree managing director Arif Makhdzir says his mission is to bring precision analytics and intelligent automation to the agriculture industry.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur used to work as a senior graphics driver engineer at AMD Inc (Radeon Technology Group) in Canada from 2011 to 2016 where he was a deep learning artificial intelligence expert.
“The drone is fast becoming a crucial tool that enables precision in agriculture. The extra precision benefits farmers by allowing them to either save cost, increase yield, or speed up productivity,” says Arif.
Braintree does not sell drones but provides drones services and software. It operates the drones for those without a drone team and uses its in-house software to provide imagery shots from the drones.
EYES ON THE FIELD
While the adoption rate of drones in the agricultural sector is relatively low, Arif said using drones can provide value for plantations besides speeding up processes from tree-counting to forecasting yields.
Arif says contractors or farmers will usually do replanting every five years and in between the years, they do what they call “filling” missing spots.
But, he says, they will still miss about five per cent of the trees.
Drone technology can generate precise locations to eliminate empty spots. With more density, more yields result.
“Using AI, the images gathered from the drones will be processed to count the missing trees,” he says.
Drones can also be used for precise terracing, to calculate accurately the volume of trees and estimate their heights.
“When designing plantation land, farmers will want to create terrace. By using drones, we are able to create digital elevation models in 3D so that they can see all the slopes and contours before starting earth works,” he says.
After the modelling, the company will have a tablet that has been equipped with GPS in bulldozers to make it easy to do the terracing.
This does not only speeds up the process but is also more precise, hence farmers can get up to five per cent more trees planted on the hills.
The most beneficial use of drones, according to Arif, is during the pesticide-spraying process.
Three methods are being used — trunk injections, mist blower using trucks and crop dusting using thrush aircraft.
Drones and crop dusters do not compete with each other because thrush aircrafts are usually used for huge hectares of land. Compared to the non-aerial method, the use of drones is also a lot faster, he says.
“Pesticide spraying of a hectare of land can be done in 20 minutes, which is 100 times faster than trunk injection,” he says.
“It is a game changer too for big plantations as drones are equipped with cameras that can detect infected trees thus enabling more targeted treatment instead of mass spraying,” he added.
Generally, the industry is facing a labour shortage as foreign workers are hard to come by.
Here is where the use of drones automation comes into play, says Arif, because that means less labour is needed.
“For senses tree count, the traditional method of walking through the plantations is labour-intensive. For a typical 500 hectares, only one drone is needed to finish the job.”
Besides saving on labour cost, the return of investment is good.
“Although it may cost RM10 more per hectare with the use of drones, if 10 to 15 missing spots can be identified and filled immediately, that’s thousands of ringgit per hectare more per year for farmers,” he says.
ACCEPTANCE OF DRONE TECH
Arif says there are already a number of plantations that have adopted this technology, especially the big companies, which have their own drone team.
But there are also those who do not have the capital to invest in these flying machines, which makes it hard for them to see the return on investment.
“Businesses need to change their perception and see the return on investment in the long term, instead of the high upfront cost.
“The industry in Malaysia does not have an invention-first mindset. It wants to see someone does it first, see the results, and only then will they invest.
“This is different from the industry in the US, where it is very keen on innovations and open to shared knowledge.”