DJI has introduced a multispectral imaging drone designed for precision agriculture and land management. DJI’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, Jan Gasparic, said that the new offering will represent a push forward in precision agriculture. “Historically, farmers have faced significant challenges in adopting new technologies,” says Gasparic. “Technology needs to be easy to use.”
The P4 Multispectral contains 6 separate sensors: The camera has 6 narrow band sensors that can capture both visible and invisible light. There is a sunlight sensor attached on top of the drone to capture ambient sunlight, which gives more accurate and consistent data. According to DJI, the sunlight sensor maximizes data collection during missions flown at different times of the day. Through this data, professionals get insights into vegetation stress, soil composition, and water salinity and contamination.
The P4 can outperform satellite data
“P4 Multispectral has the promise to transform the agriculture and land management industries by collecting precise plant-level data without having to send personnel into the field for manual surveys,” says Jan Gasparic, director of strategic partnerships at DJI. “By combining multispectral imaging into a trusted, efficient and affordable tool, DJI is making this transformative technology more accessible to professionals around the world who are pioneering the adoption of drones in their industries.”
Gasparics informs that scouting the fields can now be done in less time. Furthermore, the data quality is also much better in comparison to what satellites can capture. He also showed a demonstration of a field map using the LiveMap technology produced by DJI partner DroneDeploy. Furthermore, it was done in real-time to help the farmers have access to immediate data. At AirWorks, DroneDeploy CEO Mike Winn said that his company has been doing precision agriculture since 2014 – and “What’s exciting about agriculture now is the scale,” says Winn.
Earlier Winn was asked if they could deliver mapping data immediately, and now with LiveMap the farmers can examine troubles at the field while drones are still in the air. “That’s true time to value,” Winn said. “And that’s enabling true scale.”
“Reliability, ease of use, and time to value,” he added. “Those are the real enablers of scale – and we see that with the P4 M.”
