Drones And Robots Could Replace Some Field Workers As Farming Goes High-Tech

By CBS News, CBS San Francisco

March 19, 2024

The fruits and vegetables you eat may soon be cultivated and processed by an army of drones and robots, some powered by artificial intelligence. In fact, it's already happening on farms across America.

Hylio, a Houston-based tech company, was granted an exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration in February for a single pilot to operate swarms of heavy drones over farms. Three battery-powered drones, some weighing as much as 400 pounds each, can now be used at one time to spray fertilizer and pesticides on fields of produce. That task is typically handled by farm workers or crop-dusting planes.

Before the FAA decision, deploying this kind of drone swarm would have required a team of licensed operators, which makes the process more complicated and expensive. Using a swarm of three drones at one time, one operator can spray 150 acres every hour.

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