New functionality for Drone Ag’s Skippy Scout mobile phone app includes 360-degree field imaging, plant counting and base station technology.
Rather than only viewing individual scouting points, the new software provides Skippy Scout 2.6 users with a bird’s eye view of the entire field. The new Scout Spheres interface offers high resolution overviews combined with the ability to inspect leaf-level scout point data.
The new version is capable of counting emerging plants 20 times faster than walking the crop. It can count cereals, OSR, soybeans, beans, peas, and potatoes, offering an accurate total of plants in an image, as well as the number of plants per square metre.
“This development will enable existing and new users to count emerging plants and then monitor the same fields to establish an accurate green area index (GAI) as the crop develops,” says Drone Ag founder Jack Wrangham.
As well as protecting and charging the drone, the new Skippy Nest solar powered base station allows Drone Ag pilots to connect to a user’s drone remotely to offer a field scouting service.
Drone Ag founder Jack Wrangham has crowd funded £600,000 since 2019 and the Skippy Scout software has attracted over 800 investors. The company is now looking to raise a further £1.45m to help fund the new base station technology.
“By operating in this way, we can offer farmers and agronomists a service that will scout fields up to 20 times faster than on foot and email them PDF reports of GAI, weed and pest data in real time. We are starting commercial trials next year in the hope that we can launch the base stations shortly after.”
