Operational drone services for agri-food

Main research question/goal

The focus of OpsDrone is lowering the threshold for the development of operational drone services for the agri-food sector. These are services that require at least 20 drone flights per year, to justify the investment in drone technology. To make these services attractive, they must be scalable, provide a guarantee of a high-quality product, and must be sufficiently adapted to the needs and operation of companies present in this sector. The focus is not so much on the farmer as the suppliers and the processing industry.

Research approach

Relevant stakeholders are reached through the business networks EUKA and Living Lab Agrifood Technology at ILVO. We select applications where operational services are required: weather insurance, seed and product research, follow-up and monitoring of quality. Other applications introduced by companies will be actively explored, always in function of the demand for operational services. We bridge from farmers to the drone sector, the provider of these services and for the implementation of the road maps for training purposes.

Relevance/Valorisation

This project provides the required support for new agri-food business cases. In addition, transfer from other sectors to the agri-food industry is explored. Through this approach we support Flemish companies to compete against aggressive foreign players seeking to dominate the market of agricultural applications related to the use of drones.