Concept for Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for a Continuous Provision of Information for Online Application in Precision Farming

Abstract. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in agriculture has greatly expanded in recent years. But typical constraints of agricultural UAVs include the need for an operator, short flight times, and low payloads. In the most common uses, there also is the problem that the UAV is used to gather information in an offline manner where the information cannot be utilized until after the flights are over. This paper describes the required characteristics of UAV systems so that the UAVs are permanent companions of agricultural machines in order to provide a basis for the machines obtaining real-time information. Example potential applications for such online (real-time) UAVs are provided.