The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to give approval for commercial use to small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) within the next few years. sUAS which at first look like remote control toys, are able to create 3-D images accurate to within 1 centimeter allowing farmers to customize management of individual sections of fields. The technology uses spectral data and can be used for early generation crop breeding line evaluations, wide scale scouting of crop conditions, weed densities, grassland conditions, production evaluation, and detection of blue-green algae in ponds, reservoirs or water supplies. Combining the use light and imaging techniques, an sUAS can gather information about plant health and identify problems before the human eye can see them. To read more about the production of sUASs and the software being developed to evaluate the data gathered by them:
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