To achieve unmanned farmland management, from a technical perspective, at least the maturity of technologies such as autonomous driving, big data, environmental perception, artificial intelligence and robots is required.

On March 12, 2020, villagers filled the drone with medicine in Jiasaiqian Village, Jiazhai Town, Eping District, Liaocheng City, Shandong Province. Using drones to spray pesticides, exterminate insects, and apply fertilizers… Using drones for plant protection operations has become a common thing in Xinjiang. How popular are drones in Xinjiang? According to statistics from XAG, the largest drone plant protection business provider in Xinjiang, the number of drone operations in Xinjiang in 2018 was 6.7 million acres, and the cotton planting area in Xinjiang was more than 30 million acres. In other words, for every 4-5 clothes made of Xinjiang cotton, the cotton material of 1 piece of clothing is sprayed using drones.

According to Nanfang Daily, DJI, a drone company in Guangdong, began to promote the first-generation plant protection drone MG-1 in Xinjiang as early as 2016. It was also this year that Wu Shaoqin and Xie Wei, who smelled business opportunities in agricultural production services, After “switching” from other industries, he jointly established the agricultural service company Tieman Plant Protection and became the agent of DJI drones in Xinjiang. In Wu Shaoqin’s view, the development speed of Tieman Plant Protection, which was attracted by plant protection drones, is to some extent the epitome of Xinjiang’s agricultural application of plant protection drones. Wu Shaoqin introduced that Tieman Plant Protection’s revenue in the first year was only a few hundred thousand, but it achieved breakeven in 2017, achieved revenue of 20 million in 2018, and approximately 60 million in 2019. It is worth mentioning that the sight of cotton pickers from various populous provinces rushing to Xinjiang to pick cotton in batches is no longer the case. They are replaced by drone operators known as “flyers” during the busy farming season. Bringing their own familiar drones, they gathered from all over the country to Xinjiang. In 2019, XAG launched an unprecedented nationwide agricultural drone joint spraying operation in rural areas of Xinjiang – the Autumn Harvest “Wings” activity. According to statistics, in August of that year, nearly 3,000 XAG plant protection drones, more than 1,500 pilots, and more than 1,000 aerial defense teams rushed to Xinjiang from all over the country, combining with more than 1,500 local drones in Xinjiang to provide cotton Spray with defoliant.

When it comes to commercial applications of drones, agriculture is undoubtedly the most promising area.In 2013, a report published by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AVSI) concluded that precision agriculture is by far the most potential commercial drone market. Today, agriculture has become the second largest application field of drones, second only to consumer drones.In 2020, the number of plant protection drones in my country is expected to reach 110,000, with an operating area of ​​1 billion acres.As the number of drones increases and the operating area continues to expand, plant protection drones have become a “common agricultural tool” in the hands of more and more farmers.

Mechanization of production methodsBefore becoming an aerial pilot and the head of an aerial defense company, Tan Yujun was one of tens of thousands of urban migrant workers and opened a small business in Dongguan. The 20 years at the beginning of the 21st century were also the 20 years when Dongguan’s transformation accelerated. The factory business became increasingly difficult. In 2016, Tan Yujun returned to his hometown in Taishan from Dongguan.The agricultural production scene in my hometown is still the same as in my memory: on the waist is the grower’s heavy medicine box, and people are walking slowly in the fields, “carrying sprayers weighing almost 50 kilograms, people are walking back and forth like this. , I sprayed 10 acres and 20 acres a day, and I was almost exhausted.”Under the double push and pull of the outside world and agricultural life, young people in the village “escape” their homes prematurely, leaving the land covered with cobwebs to their parents. The elderly who lack safety awareness put their hands into the container to stir pesticides, or were sent to the hospital due to inhalation of excessive pesticides. They are dedicated but unable to protect a few acres of land.What Qin Yujun saw was also the overall dilemma faced by China’s agriculture at this time: the statistical bulletin on the development of human resources and social security shows that in the ten years from 2010 to 2020, the total number of migrant workers in my country increased from 240 million to 286 million; currently The proportion of rural over-age labor force over 55 years old in rural areas has exceeded 34%. In the rapidly changing Chinese society, agriculture seems to be entangled in a sticky gel-like substance, heavy and slow.Now that he has decided to return to his hometown to find a living, Tan Yujun wants to make some real changes. So, can the cumbersome and traditional agricultural production methods be changed through mechanization?He used to play with drones, engage in aerial photography, and compare flying skills with his friends in Dongguan, but he also knew that drones could be used in agriculture. In 2016, after Qin Yujun made his decision, he and several friends pooled together 400,000 yuan to purchase four plant protection drones, equipped with transport vehicles and spare batteries and officially began to engage in “aerial defense services” in rural areas.At first, his idea was relatively simple: with drones, pesticides, and pilots, he could solve the big problem of pesticide spraying in the local rice planting process—the lack of manpower. But in actual operation, they soon discovered that the first batch of purchased models were not very easy to use.First of all, the position accuracy is far from enough. During the pesticide spraying process, the requirements for the accuracy of plant protection drones are higher. Once the action route and distance deviate, pesticides will be re-sprayed or missed over the field, or may even rush out of the field, causing damage to crops and even personnel. harm.In addition, the control of plant protection drones was still relatively difficult at that time. There are many drone manufacturers, and there are differences between their products. The brands that Qin Yujun purchased in the early days required the use of remote controls to manually control the flight path. This semi-automatic operation mode is very demanding for pilots, and it needs to be used at both distance and height. Judging by the naked eye, the pilot moves back and forth in the field to determine the position and route. The work is hard but inefficient.Nowadays, the maximum operating efficiency of a single plant protection drone has reached 1,800 acres/day. It may be difficult to imagine that at that time, “the pilots were running around all day, and they could only do one (referring to spraying) 200-300 acres in more than ten hours.” .” Gao Panlong, another plant protection drone pilot and head of an aerial defense service company told a reporter from Nandu Weekly that there were still many “problems” with early plant protection drones: such as the small amount of pesticides they carried, their short battery life, and the lack of pesticides. Drift, etc., are in urgent need of more targeted solutions.Of course, there are more practical difficulties: a lot of costs have been invested in setting up a company and purchasing equipment, but farmers’ acceptance of drone spraying was low at that time. Out of curiosity, people would ask: How high can a plane fly? How long can it fly? How large an area can be sprayed? How much does a spray cost? But don’t actually spend money on this service. This puts a lot of operational pressure on flight defense service companies.UAVLUTIONSXAG Communication Manager Xu Yuping told a reporter that this was a very common problem in the early stages of the promotion of agricultural drones, and it occurred frequently across the country. Flying defense service teams in various places can only help farmers slowly accept new technologies through methods such as “free service experience” and “pay first after the service is effective”.

Five years of “fast” iteration present, plant protection drones have been developed globally for nearly 30 years, but their development and application time in China is relatively short. Professor He Xiongkui of China Agricultural University once said in an interview that around 2003-2005, domestic agricultural departments and research institutions began to think about “how to make the medicine boxes carried by ordinary people fly when the cost of rural labor is rising.” .The Medical Equipment and Application Technology Research Center of China Agricultural University, where He Xiongkui works, officially began developing plant protection drones in 2008. By 2010, the single-rotor, oil-powered plant protection drone, which was the result of research and development, was unveiled at agricultural machinery exhibitions across the country and “was crowded with onlookers.”But even at this time, the development of domestic plant protection drones is still in its infancy. The prices of drones are high, their performance is unstable, and there is no mass production.The change happened in 2015. Around 2015, as more and more enterprises and social funds poured into the industry, China’s plant protection drone market began to show a sudden trend. It was also this year that Guangzhou XAG Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “XAG”) and DJI Innovations (hereinafter referred to as “DJI”) began to develop agricultural drones. In April of that year, XAG first DJI released the P20, the first plant protection drone; in November, DJI released the first agricultural plant protection drone MG-1 – they will also become the two leading companies in this field in the future.In the past five years, DJI has successively launched a series of models such as MG-1P, T20, T16, T30, T10, Phantom 4 multispectral version, etc. Xifei Q has launched P20, P30, PIO, XP, P40, P80 and V40, etc. Series models.More and more companies are focusing on the research and development and promotion of agricultural drones, which ultimately leads to rapid improvements in product performance and cost-effectiveness, and equipment sales grow faster.DJI public relations officer Fan Wenze told reporters from Nandu Weekly that there have been four breakthrough innovations in agricultural drones in recent years, namely: fully automated operations; operation modes for special terrain and crops; radar and automatic obstacle avoidance; variable spraying and sowing.

July 27, 2020, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang. In the smart agriculture demonstration area of ​​Nongken Hongwei Farm Co., Ltd., teachers from Northeast Agricultural University are debugging hyperspectral drones.Radar and automatic obstacle avoidance are very important. Li Xinglong, an engineer at DJI Agriculture, explained that from the perspective of the development of radar systems, the trend is that the number of radar systems is becoming smaller and smaller, but the functions are increasing. “For example, it might have been just height setting before, but now it can avoid obstacles and set height, and then it has been continuously expanded in the direction of obstacle avoidance, to the current 360 degrees.”Height-fixing means that the drone must detect its own flight height in real time when flying, know its own three-dimensional coordinates, and feed it back to the ground equipment. This is very important for the safety of the drone and the accuracy of the operation. Obstacle avoidance, as the name suggests, means avoiding obstacles. Plant protection drones generally spray 1-2 meters above crops. If they do not automatically avoid obstacles, they will easily hit trees. Optimizing these two issues has become one of the focuses of drone technology iteration.There are also issues of load capacity and battery life. Li Xinglong said that the increase in the load capacity of agricultural drones from 10 kilograms to the current 30 kilograms is actually a slow superposition process, and a little iteration is a safer choice. From spraying to fertilizing, we are constantly adjusting according to the new needs of users. Battery life is an energy technology issue. Li Xinglong believes that user costs can be reduced from two aspects: delaying battery life and increasing charging speed.Many analysts have pointed out that there is a generation gap between the plant protection drone products launched in 2015 and the latest products on the market. Looking at the products from 2012 to 2014 from the current perspective is like looking at “experimental products”.What’s interesting is that many of the iterations and updates of such “rapid” products are based on timely responses to user feedback. Just like the masters on the table tennis court, under the push and pull of “making requests” and “responding to requests”, in a sense, the huge drone service team and the farmers themselves have become the key to the development of drone technology. Real “product managers” have shaped the rapid development path of China’s agricultural drones over the past five years.

From “Plant Protection Drones” to “Agricultural Drones” Nowadays, an observable change is that for companies that provide aerial prevention services to farmers, the unit price of plant protection operations is continuing to decline. In Taishan, Jiangmen, the service price of plant protection drones was still 15 yuan/acre in 2016, but now, most of them have dropped to 10 yuan/acre or even 8 yuan/acre. The “2020 Plant Protection UAV Industry Development Report” released by DJI shows that taking the eastern Heilongjiang region with the largest operating volume in the country as an example, the operating unit price of plant protection UAVs has increased from 8 yuan/ The price per mu has been reduced to a low price of 2.5 yuan/mu.

The development trend reflected behind it is worth pondering: as the acquisition cost of agricultural drones decreases and the difficulty of operation decreases, agricultural drones have gradually developed from early “experimental products” to a “common agricultural production machinery”.Qin Yujun recalled that in 2016, he invested 400,000 yuan in purchasing four drones, vehicles, batteries, etc. However, due to limitations of work efficiency, the area served that year was only about 40,000 acres. In 2017, in order to improve efficiency, the company updated its equipment and replaced it with a more easy-to-use XAG drone for a set price of about 120,000 yuan.But now, the prices of many brands of agricultural drones have dropped, while their operating efficiency has increased rapidly. “You can buy them for as cheap as 30,000 to 40,000 yuan.” “It used to be difficult to spray 300 acres a day, but now it’s It can cover 600 acres.” Xu Yutao also confirmed this phenomenon to reporters, “From the corporate perspective, we actually want to reduce farmers’ purchasing costs as much as possible. The price of machines has dropped in the past two years.”In March 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs mentioned for the first time at the National Agricultural Mechanization Work Conference that plant protection drones would be included in the pilot program for agricultural machinery subsidies. In September 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, and the Civil Aviation Administration jointly issued the “Notice on Carrying out Agricultural Machinery Purchase Subsidies to Guide the Standardized Application of Plant Protection Unmanned Aircrafts”. Currently, many agricultural provinces across the country have included plant protection drones in the scope of subsidies.More large farms and growers choose to purchase drone equipment on their own. Calculating this account is very simple: if the service cost of plant protection drones is calculated at 15 yuan/acre, this means that a large household with 3,000 acres will spend 45,000 yuan on one service fee. In comparison, of course, if you purchase it yourself The machine is more “cost-effective”.Statistics show that a total of 30,000 plant protection drones were sold in 2019, and the cumulative sales in 2020 have reached 60,000 units. Correspondingly, the number of plant protection drones in stock is expected to reach 110,000. The operating area is 1 billion acres.The control technology of drones is also becoming simpler. Gao Panlong analyzed, “As far as the current models produced by leading agricultural drone companies are concerned, DJI is operated with a remote control, and XAG is operated with a mobile phone, but the principles are the same. Operators plan the route in advance. The drone will then automatically spray along the route.”Gao Panlong mentioned that for agricultural pilots, the most important thing is plant protection knowledge, and drone control is relatively easy.The China Business Industry Research Institute analyzed in the report that market demand has driven industrial upgrading, and the UAV market has gradually developed from the initial “dedicated operation” to the direction of “fool-driven drones”.When “flight technology” gradually becomes a secondary factor, planning a route, and replacing medicine boxes, and batteries can even be completed by only one person. Qin Yujun described it as being like a fully automatic washing machine. Open the door and put the clothes in. , take out the clothes when it’s over, and don’t worry about the rest.The functions of drones have gradually become diversified from the previous focus on pesticide spraying. Spreading applications have become the main component of the use of plant protection drones, including rice fertilizer and seed spreading, rapeseed spreading, grassland seed spreading, Fish and shrimp pond feed spreading, etc. After the “medicine box took off”, seeds, fertilizers, and feeds “flew up” one after another.Take aerial seeding of rice, which is currently gradually becoming mature, as an example. Aerial seeding eliminates many tedious and labor-intensive links in traditional rice cultivation, such as manual sowing and seedling cultivation. Currently, many companies are focusing on research and solutions to problems such as seed placement uniformity during aerial sowing and improving seed survival rate. “There are small buds on the seeds. During the aerial sowing process, the seeds are thrown out at high speed. If the small buds are interrupted, the survival rate will be reduced.”In addition to aerial defense and aerial seeding, the accuracy of remote sensing drones in observing crop growth is also constantly improving. The collection and analysis of agricultural data through agricultural remote sensing drones can help people understand real-time information on farmland and the growth status of crops, and establish scientific, precise operating system to reduce the waste of agricultural products and environmental pollution in daily operations. In some modern high-standard farmland, these technologies will be the first to be applied.Overall, the current application scope of “plant protection drones” has undergone major changes and should be redefined as “agricultural drones”. The “farmland of the future” is more like “unmanned farmland”. Through the smart agricultural system, drones, unmanned vehicles, water and fertilizer integration, and various agricultural machinery and equipment will be uniformly controlled, the movement trajectories of agricultural machinery will be recorded, and the movement of agricultural machinery will be recorded through The collected data scientifically controls the growth of crops.Peng Bin, the founder of XAG Technology, once mentioned that to achieve unmanned farmland management, from a technical perspective, at least the maturity of technologies such as autonomous driving, big data, environmental perception, artificial intelligence, and robots is required. At that time, looking back at the agricultural technology in 2021, it may feel quite “experimental