These days, Unmanned Aerial System (UAS, also known as drone) are widely used for civil operations, including but not limited to transportation, delivery service, law enforcement, precision agriculture, rescue mission, public health, medical industry, real estimate business and more. UAS-based remote sensing for precision agriculture, in particular, is widely applicable to enhance crop scouting exercises. Mission-oriented actionable task using drones, however, are still limited.
We developed a low-cost insect scouting drone and tested in the alfalfa seed farmfield to collect lygus insect, a critical insect for alfalfa seed plants in the Treasure Valley. It worked very well and drone-based insect scouting is a promising tool to minimize impacts in a changing global environment (e.g., urbanization, climate change and variability)