WHITE PAPER SERIES ON PRECISION FARMING

ABSTRACT
The new dawn of precision farming is
here thanks to the advance in Drone
technology.

PRECISION FARMING
Using Drone Technology

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

Table of Contents
1. TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION IN AGRICULTURE ......................................................................................... 2
2. PRECISION AGRICULTURE ........................................................................................................................ 3
2.1 OBJECTIVE OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE ................................................................................................. 3
3. PRECISION AGRICULTURE AND DRONE APPLICATION .............................................................................. 4
4. IMPACT OF DRONE APPLICATION IN AGRICULTURE ................................................................................. 5
5. DRONES APPLICATION............................................................................................................................. 6
6. PRECISION AGRICULTURE IN PALM OIL PLANTATION ............................................................................. 10
7. ADAPTATION OF DRONES IN PALM OIL PLANTATION ............................................................................. 12
8. SPECIFICATION DETAILS ........................................................................................................................ 14

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 1

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

1. TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION IN AGRICULTURE

Agro industry play a major role in nation’s economic growth and one of the biggest
contributor in Domestic Gross Production (GDP),and wealth capital. Along with the
environment challenges together with the demanding market, modern method is
introduced to replace long due conventional method of farming to meet current market
demand. The most challenging issue in agro industry are human resources, where human
resources are the back bone of farming. With technology development, modern farming
benefits in the way like it never been before.

Innovative application of latest technology discovery lead to modern farming as we seen

it and keep developing tailored to the industry demand. New method of farming been
introduced with the awareness of sustainability, productivity and environmental in mind.
This new method integrates latest technological advancement in farming and proven to
be a revolution to modern agriculture.

Smart ICT programs solutions and Drone technology among the latest application used in
modern method of farming and has been used worldwide, creating the concept of

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 2

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

‘Precision Agriculture’. Precision Agriculture are proven to be the new way of modern and
smart farming inspired by the awareness of sustainability agriculture and the demand of
consumerism, product safety and environment. Precision agriculture also benefits in terms
revenue and income to farmers, which many farmers nowadays change to new method
of Precision Agriculture.

2. PRECISION AGRICULTURE

Precision Agriculture drive farmer to modern way of farming for tackling challenges in
agriculture such environmental changes, production and sustainability. This will allow
better farming that can increase production yield, minimized harvesting period, maximized
land usage and decreased in overhead cost. Precision agriculture also enable farmer to
a better farming management using IT platform. With crop production and health
monitoring system, farming management system, farming will be base on big data. This will
allow better yield, farming operations and planning. Also, big data can be used in
commercial plantation forecast hence increasing revenue and commodity market.

2.1 OBJECTIVE OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE

I. Increasing in production yield per acre
II. maximized land usage
III. -lowering harvesting period
IV. Reducing human labour whilst increasing working hour

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 3

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

V. Increasing in revenue whilst reducing in cost

VI. Improving farm sustainability with reducing environmental effect.

3. PRECISION AGRICULTURE AND DRONE APPLICATION

Drone technology has become integral to business and industries where drone
applications are been fully utilized, tailored to suit certain industry requirement. Drone
technology enable business to cut cost, minimized production time even increasing

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 4

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

revenue itself. For a developing nation such as Malaysia where main commodity is a
agriculture product derive,, modernizing farming through technology has become
compulsory to keep up with the progress and competitors.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

4. IMPACT OF DRONE APPLICATION IN AGRICULTURE

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 5

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

Light aircraft application for pesticide

5. DRONES APPLICATION and fertilizer spraying had been used
since aircraft were invented. It is proven
to be revolutionized since it was
introduced. With its highly cost, limited
used and conventional, not many
farmers opted to aerial application.

Now farmers can achieve aerial

advantage in farming with drones
application. Drones are proven to be
Drone in agriculture has been used widely in
the replacement of conventional light
farming, crop analysis and plantation
aircraft application, with the benefit of
planning and proven to be a revolutionary in
modern agriculture. The advantage of low cost and highly effective. With

drones in agriculture tremendously change Artificial Intelligence (AI), drones can be

the way we look at modern farming where precise and autonomous. Precision
sustainability can be achieved. guaranteed cost efficient and
sustainability and can be used from
small farm to large scale commercial
plantation, from flat land to hard and
tough terrain where light aircraft
application
TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page couldn’t
|6 achieve before.
TRIXXIA SDN BHD

Introducing SWIFT F4 precision

agriculture drone, latest innovation in
precision agriculture. SWIFT developed
specifically for agriculture application
where every single details of design with
in mind of agriculture requirement.

MMC Swift is a turnkey solution for

precision Agriculture to drive
Productivity. With the latest spraying
system and most useful terrain-following
radar, Swift can accomplish agricultural
task at the most economic cost. In order
to give farmers new ways to increase
yields and reduce crop damage, MMC
designed Liquid Pressure Spraying

Drone system and Fog Spraying Drone

System with the function of low dose
automatic record and break point
continue to spray.

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 7

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

SWIFT F4 LIQUID SPRAY VERSION

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 8

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

SWIFT F4 FOG SPRAY VERSION FOR PALM OIL PLANTATION

FEATURES

FLIGHT CONTROL

• Autonomous low altitude operation

between 15m -30m
• Autonomous Precision spraying 1-
distance between crop and and sprayer
with spraying radius of 3 - 6m
• 18 min flight time (with payload) in max.
Speed 10m/s
• Working area covered 15min/hectare
with 10L payload
• Autonomous Vertical take off and
landing (VTOL) and return to base (RTB)
MISSION CONTROL

• Autonomous GPS waypoint mission

control with multiple direction
• Autonomous spraying control with GPS
pin point
• Autonomous spraying mode with spray
pressure and velocity,, spraying radius
and distance control mode
• payload monitor sensor with
autonomous Return to base (RTB) for
payload refueling
• Autonomous mission return to last point
prior RTB for refueling and continue
flight mission
• Autonomous low battery return to base
(RTB)
• Autonomous GIS mapping flight plan
• Multiple mission control point and
spraying mode
• Autonomous terrain response flight
control with detection sensor for
uneven terrain and obstacles

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 9

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

6. PRECISION AGRICULTURE IN PALM OIL PLANTATION

Malaysia is the world’s second largest exporter of palm oil targeting innovative solution
to remain competitive in the market. With major percentage of the plantations owned
by small scale private farmers, there is a huge demand to affordable low-cost remote
sensing platform that can be used for palm census, yield estimation and productivity.
The ability to collect high spatial resolution aerial data is changing the way oil palm
growers are approaching the business. Conventional precision agriculture (PA)
practices in these plantations such as remote sensing and spraying are being replaced
by integrated fixed-wing or multi-rotor UAVs, allowing collection of information to be
instantly accessible, and enabling growers to make immediate decisions.

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 10

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

Precision farming for increasing oil palm yield requires optimization of returns on inputs
while preserving resources based on sensing, measuring and health assessment of the
plantations. Relying on satellites and airplanes images of palms, there’s a substantial
lag in terms of getting the data quickly enough. Professionals have been using satellite
and UAV-based remote sensing for plantation monitoring applications such as
vegetation cover assessment, vegetation mapping, crop monitoring and forest fire
applications. Conventional scouting of oil palm plantations as well as palm census and
quantification of the amount of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) are intensive labor tasks that
are either ignored in oil palm plantations or are carried out manually by the use of hand
counters. Yield reduction due to high density palm areas that causes etiolation is an
issue in plantation management. Palm densities are an important and limiting factor for
growth, nutritional status, fruiting and hence for a plantation’s yield. Optimal palm
densities depend on different factors, such as cultivars, climate, soil characteristics and
land preparation. Refilling of palm gaps and correction of non-optimal densities.

Aerial photography from UAV has bridged the gap between ground-based
observations and remotely sensed imagery of conventional aircraft and satellite
platforms and has made possible great improvements in crop scouting, yield mapping,
field boundary mapping, soil sampling and soil property mapping, weeds and pest
control and mapping, vehicle’s guidance, navigation control and spraying. These
devices are typically low cost, light weight and low airspeed aircraft that are well suited
for oil-palm plantations.

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 11

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

7. ADAPTATION OF DRONES IN PALM OIL PLANTATION

Compared with piloted airplanes and satellite imaging, the ability of UAVs in collecting
higher-resolution aerial images at a significantly lower cost can provide Oil Palm
growers with more accurate information on palm height, crown size and normalized
difference vegetation index (NDVI), enabling practicing of data-driven techniques for
early and accurate yield estimation and health assessment. While a typical UAV may
cost as little as RM 4,000.00, it can be integrated with custom instrumentations,
controllers, sensors and software to operate as a flexible remote sensing or variable rate
technology platform to contribute to plantation management, growth and soil.

PRECISION AGRICULTURE AERIAL

SYSTEM

PRECISION SPRAYING PRECISION MAPPING

REMOTE SENSING
-crop seed - 2D, 3D, Orthomosaic, etc
- LIDAR, multispectral camera
-fertilizer
Thermal camera, NVID, etc

DATA MANAGEMENT

- Farm planning and management

Adaptation of UAV technology for oil palm plantations involves integration of vision
sensors, machine vision algorithms and control system for:

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 12

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

(i) yield monitoring and yield mapping,

(ii) automated airborne pest monitoring using thermal cameras,

(iii) identification and counting of specific insects from very-high resolution optical
images,

(iv) development of decision support system (DSS) using georeferenced images as a

basis for a GIS-based system giving oil palm growers the possibility to incorporate data
directly to their precision farming platforms,

(v) identification and mapping of Ganoderma disease using hyperspectral camera,

(vi) automated retrieving of Oil Palm canopy Chlorophyll and nutrient content from
multispectral and hyperspectral UAV acquired images, and

(vii) dynamic web mapping and inventory management of oil palm productivity using
in situ sensors.

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 13

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

8. SPECIFICATION DETAILS

Standard weight(Without battery

and liquid) 10 kg
SWIFT F4 LIQUID SPRAY VERSION
Max.take-off weight 24.6kg

Volume 10 L

Battery 2pcs16000mAh(44.4V,12S)

Spray Range 3~4m

Diagonal Wheelbase 1354mm

12min(@16000mAh, 20kg take off

Hovering Time weight)
Applicable Crops
Operating Height 1~3m

Max. Flying Speed 10m/s Rice, wheat, corn, etc

Size of fuselage 1950mm*580mm Applicable Liquid

Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, foliar fertilizers and other water, oil based liquids

Advantages

Simple and durable spraying system, versatile and low cost, suitable for most crops

AVERAGE SPRAYING OF 8min/hectare

SW IFT F4 FOGGING VERSION

Standard weight(Without battery and

liquid) 13.5kg

Max.take-off weight 17.5kg

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 14

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

Volume 1.7 L

Battery 2pcs16000mAh(44.4V,12S)

Propeller Size 24 inch( folding)

Diagonal Wheelbase 1354mm

Max.Flight Time 17 min

Max. Flying Speed 10 m/s

Operating Height Limitation 30m(ABSL) Applicable Crops

Operating Frequency 2.400 GHz~2.483 GHz

Fruit trees, mountain jungles,palm oil,
coconut, etc
DataLink Frequency 2.400 GHz~2.483 GHz
Applicable Liquid
Control Range 3 km

Pesticides, fungicides and so on

The mixture ratio of liquid and tobacco oil 3:1
Advantage
The Life Span of Engine 1500h
High altitudes spraying, in wide area, suitable for
tall plant or vegetation and deep forest with
Size of fuselage 1950mm*580mm difficult terrain
Working Time 8 min

Smoke radius 6~10m

OilNo. 92#

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 15

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 16

TRIXXIA SDN BHD

TRIXXIA SDN BHD © 2018 Page | 17