Project description
Spraying crops using a swarm of drones
Farmers will one day soon be able to push a button and send a swarm of autonomous drones to spray their fields. This is the technology that the EU funded Skyx project is proposing. It uses proprietary algorithms for complex space coverage. For instance, each drone in the group can have a different payload, speed, width and time. It is also possible to manoeuvre the drones to ensure homogeneous farmland coverage or ‘hot spots’ coverage. One of the key benefits of this technology is that it can ‘compile’ the terrain, as well as the crops, pesticides and the available machinery into an optimised mission planning, allowing for the auto-piloting of the robot drones. Skyx will test this technology in various agriculture service providers and validate a business model.
Objective
"Skyx is an Agriculture technology company developing the ""brain"" (in software) for a swarm of modular and autonomous spraying robots. Started with drones.
The technology: proprietary algorithms for complex space coverage (including static and dynamic obstacles), real-time swarm operation, homogeneous farmland coverage or “hot-spots” coverage for an unlimited number of spots and shapes. The innovative agriculture-technology “compiles” the terrain + crops + pesticides + the available machinery into an optimized mission planning, mission control, and auto-piloting of the robots.
The product: you push a button and a group of robots sprays your farmland. There is no need to install the product on each robot. Each robot in the modular swarm can have different performance and accuracy level and therefore the optimized solution fit for small, medium, or large scale farmlands.
Skyx product is for agriculture spraying service providers, and not for growers.
The company: was founded by Eylon Sorek and Dr. Itzik Turkel, developed a working demo and established on-going cooperation with a Tier-1 agriculture spraying applicator. The team works intensively with the entire ecosystem including specialty crops growers, tier-1 aerial operator, tier-1 pesticides vendor, and drone builders.
Recently an agriculture venture capital firm invested 500K EUR to continue the product development. An additional challenge is to analyze the potential of our solution internationally and validate our value proposition to every member in our commercial environment. Therefore, Phase-1 grant will help us testing our technology in various agriculture service providers in the EU and in America and also will help us validate our business model and alternative business models."
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
4720649 RAMAT HASHARON
Israel
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.