Drone Ag was founded in 2015 by Jack & Hugh Wrangham.
From the start, the company goal has been to provide farmers and agronomists with drone-based tools to assist them in their highly demanding roles.
Drone Ag has accomplished this by providing hardware, software & training for both drone-based crop monitoring and aerial spraying systems.
Skippy Scout
After four years acting as a 3rd party distributor of various software and hardware, and a highly experienced training school, In 2019, frustrated with existing drone-based, crop monitoring methods, they decided to develop their own smartphone app called "Skippy Scout".
Skippy Scout controls standard, off-the-shelf drones in order to improve and assist with modern crop monitoring methods.
Flying at both low and high altitudes above the field, Skippy images and analyses the crop; collecting useful data that can be shared anywhere, instantly.
This data immediately highlights any variation throughout a given crop, and can then be used to inform application rates accordingly.
Big believers in both the future of precision Ag and the important role of the Agronomist, Drone Ag sees Skippy Scout as an additional tool to add to farmers' and agronomists' arsenals - saving time and increasing efficiency in the field.
Skippy provides quick, easy and actionable data using two different flight behaviours:
- Scout Spheres; an intuitive field overview function; Skippy flies the drone to the centre of the crop at an appropriate height. Here it takes a quick spherical panorama of the whole crop, this image is then sent to the user's account and is viewable within 2 minutes of upload. These Sphere's can be sent to any device with internet and a web browser. Please view our Scout Sphere's tour, here
- Leaf-level analysis; the drone is flown to specific points throughout the field. At each point, the drone lowers itself to 2m above the crop, where it takes a high-resolution image, facing directly down. These leaf-level images are then uploaded and analysed with Skippy's AI, to produce a crop report which shows each image alongside its AI analysis result. These reports are processed & sent within approximately 15 minutes of upload, and the resulting data is also overlaid within the Scout Spheres interface.
With initial AI development being directed at the crops grown at Drone Ag's Headquarters in Northumberland, and with a specific focus on WOSR; Skippy's AI now provides:
- Emergent plant counting,
- Green area index measurements,
- Unhealthy leaf %,
- Flowering ratios,
- Pod-development,
- Ripening,
- And Senescence.
Skippy is constantly being developed and improved upon, with an aim to include integration and analysis for as many farm management platforms, drone systems and crops as possible.
Find out more by visiting the Skippy Scout website.
Drone Spraying Systems
Drone sprayers have existed since the company began in 2015, and since then they have come on leaps and bounds.
Drone Ag offers the latest in DJI's market leading "Agras" systems.
Please visit the Drone Ag website to find out more
