Venture Surveyor fights European corn worm
Agriculture applications tests started with success. The biological fight against European Corn Worm is the case chosen for the first trial. This specific treatment involves the distribution of thousands of insects called Trichogramma Brassicae, capable of fighting the worm. Those insects are contained in small cellulose capsules. Venture Surveyor, equipped by a special internally developed distributor, is capable to fly a complete automatic mission, releasing capsules one by one upon reaching accurate positions.
During this very first trial, a smaller canister was used still capable of containing more than 250 caps, enough for a couple of hectares of corn. The target was to validate accuracy and reliability of distribution system. The canister is thermally insulated in order to maintain a low temperature inside capsules preventing insects to activate before the reach the ground. The mission is completely automatic, without the need of any pilot. Mission operator has the sole task of monitoring the flight preventing safety issues in case of problems or mistakes. The autopilot automatically switch the distributor on upon reaching the area to be treated and switching it off when leaving it.
Flight planning is completely automatic and takes a couple of minutes only. It is done wth the aid of a special custom made software tool, that allows the operator to draw polygon around the area to be treated. The flight path is automatically done, ready to be uploaded to the drone. Less than ten minutes are needed to become ready for the operation. All flight path can be stored in a database ready to be re-used for the following treatments. Our unique planning methodology is capable of realigning the drone at the beginning of each leg, in order to achieve the maximum distribution efficiency and reliability. Venture Surveyor advanced features such a completely sealed central body, the inertial platform temperature compensation and the laser altimeter are adding an unreachable degree of reliability
