Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/907666
December 2017 WINES&VINES 63 WINE EAST GRAPEGROWING Choosing to abort the mission, the drone does its best to return to the initial launch location and land on its own while the defunct human pilot can only wait, hope and chew. Freedom and consequence Compared to ground vehicles, an autonomous aerial drone can claim the advantage of open space. When flying 400 feet above a vineyard, a 5-foot lateral deviation from the intended route has no consequence. That same devia- tion in a GPS-driven tractor will quickly wreck both vineyard and tractor. On the other hand, autonomous aerial vehicles require—both by law and common sense—constant human oversight. This prevents the human pilot from focusing on other tasks while the drone is working. Ground-based agricultural drones also have the advantage of being able to sim- ply shut down in the event of an error without falling out of the sky. What are drones good for? To many, drones are considered to be most useful for photographing things and blow- ing them up—sometimes both, and not al- ways in that order. This may be somewhat true for aerial drones, but they are also ca- pable of carrying sensors other than cam- e r a s , a n d t h e r e a r e a f e w c o m m e r c i a l examples of aerial drones equipped with small sprayers. In addition, a drone field tractor being guided by GPS can perform many tasks typically handled by human op- erators. Ground-based vehicles clearly have the overwhelming advantage for most day- to-day field operations. Aerial drones in viticulture: an emerging case study An eastern New York grower recently asked for a site inspection of a four-year-old vine- yard block that was performing inconsistently and losing vines. Touring the block on an ATV provided a sense of broad inconsistency punc- tuated by areas of missing vines, soil erosion and low vigor. Each area of the block appeared to have different causes for the low vigor, but with some overlap. Organizing all that infor- mation from the ground to formulate an ac- tion plan can be tricky, so we flew the drone to make some maps. • Extensive Selection of Glass Bottles, Corks and Closures • Custom Glass Decorating • High Speed Shrink Sleeving • Re-pack, Delivery and Inventory Services • Dedicated Customer Service Team 888-539-3922 • waterloocontainer.com What sets us apart? The Waterloo Container Team SERVICE A three-zone vigor map (left) was created using the normalized difference vegetation index. The vigor map (right) is overlaid with an NRCS soil survey map.