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Here we are at the Hyde County Airport, on the eastern side of North Carolina. Hyde County
is the least used of our public airports. But it is the site we have proposed to the
FAA as a UAV test site, UAV being an unmanned aircraft vehicle, as well as an unmanned aircraft
system and a remotely piloted aircraft. We are flying today Vireo, a small plane from
UTC Technologies, a small aerospace group out of Charlotte. We also have Bosh Technologies
that has a Condor II helicopter and a Super Swiper, a fixed-wing aircraft. It is about
a six foot, nine-pound aircraft. Flights today will be 400 feet and below.
We are flying UAVs for agricultural missions to better survey these fields that have recently
been harvested and checking some of the progress we have on these fields that we map out monthly.
To help out with some of the imagery, we have multispectral cameras on two of these aircraft
we are flying today to look at crop stress and crop progress.
To fly one of these aircraft, which operate on battery power, costs us about $10 per hour.
We can get just about anywhere, fly a couple of hundred acres inside of an hour easily.
We are looking at doing that kind of research. We are how we can automate the analysis tools
on the backside and pull in some of the other resources from here at NC State to provide
the imagery answer and results to a farmer or crop consultant needs to say ‘Here is
the status of your farm, here is what you can expect for the next couple of months.’