Korea National University of Agriculture and Fisheries (President Cho Chae-ho, KNUAF) established the agricultural drone station system in cooperation with a corporation. The university holds the demonstration of the agricultural work of smart digital rice cultivation on March 18.

The automation and smart system of the agricultural drone station system is a new technology researched and developed in cooperation between the KNUAF and the company named I-Pop (Jeonju University). The system can be used for major farming activities of rice cultivation, where drones are mostly used, throughout the year.

One can automatically charge, spray chemical fertilizers or pesticides, directly sow the seeds at the agricultural drone station. This is a new concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as this automated farming system can be used for 24 hours a day and in the night-time.

On top of rice cultivation, the agricultural drone station will be increasingly used for sowing double-crop bulky feed (Italian Ryegrass), identifying missing plants (areas free of plants) after rice planting, maintaining the uniformity of seedling stands after direct sowing, studying nutritional status of crops, detecting weeds, controlling pests and diseases in real-time, surveying the quantity and quality of crops and meteorological disasters, monitoring of cultivation areas by each field crop and identifying bean cultivars.
This new technology will provide real-time high-precision location information of each field, by using the GPS-RTK. Also, automated flying of drones through the automated course mapping with 1~2cm of margin of error will raise the degree of work precision.

The work progress can be checked through a mobile application. This will secure confidence of farms which requested the agricultural work and be useful for commissioned projects of professional farmers, farming corporations, local agricultural cooperatives and local governments for the vulnerable people in agricultural and farming villages (the aged·women, etc.)

Dean Park Gwang-ho of the Department of Crops and Forestry of the KNUAF who participated in the research and development said, “The agricultural drone station system will take the lead in the eras of smart farms and digital agriculture. The automated and smart farming will increase farmers’ income and can serve as an alternative to resolving labor shortage.”