See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/359692652

Drone Implementation in Precision Agriculture – A Survey

Article · April 2022

DOI: 10.46338/ijetae0422_10

CITATIONS READS
9 3,580

3 authors:

Mohamad Hazwan Mohd Ghazali A. Azmin

Universiti Sains Malaysia Universiti Teknologi MARA
19 PUBLICATIONS 154 CITATIONS 9 PUBLICATIONS 22 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Wan Rahiman
Universiti Sains Malaysia
68 PUBLICATIONS 718 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Wan Rahiman on 12 April 2022.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
Manuscript Received: 22 Feb 2022, Received in Revised form: 19 March 2022, Accepted: 01 April 2022 DOI: 10.46338/ijetae0422_10

Drone Implementation in Precision Agriculture – A Survey

Mohamad Hazwan Mohd Ghazali1, Azwati Azmin2, Wan Rahiman3
1,2,3
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia Engineering Campus, 14300 Nibong Tebal,
Penang, Malaysia
3
Cluster of Smart Port and Logistic Technology (COSPALT), Universiti Sains Malaysia Engineering Campus, 14300 Nibong
Tebal, Penang, Malaysia
Abstract— Drones have been widely applied in the To address these issues, precision agriculture can be
precision agriculture sector in the past few years. implemented as this practice is effective in improving the
Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), sensors, productivity, management system, saving time, and
microcontrollers, and the Internet of Things (IoT) into the reducing the usage of harmful chemical substances that
drones can help overcome the challenges faced by the farmers,
might harm the atmosphere and human.
such as livestock monitoring, wide land area, crop spraying,
and in-depth crop health analysis. In this paper, several drone
applications in precision agriculture are discussed, including
the hardware and techniques involved. In addition,
commercial agricultural drones available in the market to
date are presented. The publications trend regarding drone
application in precision agriculture is also included and based
on reviewing more than 50 articles, a quadcopter-type drone
is the most used drone in this sector, and seed planting is the
least explored drone application area.

Keywords—camera, crop monitoring, drone, mapping,

spraying system

I. INTRODUCTION
Precision agriculture can be defined as the application of
technologies that integrates information systems, smart
machinery, sensors, computers, and well-organized
management for the purpose of improving the crop
performance and environmental quality, under variabilities
within the agricultural system [1, 2]. It is one of the most
prominent areas to be explored by drones. In Malaysia,
agriculture sector contributes about 8% to the national GDP
as of third quarter (Q3) 2020 (refer Figure 1) and provides
employment for 16% of Malaysia's population [3].
Agriculture in Malaysia can be distinguished into primary
commodities, with palm oil and rubber as the main export
and agro-food production (paddy, vegetables, fruits,
livestock, etc.), which is in conjunction with the national
food security agenda. According to [4], it was discovered
that 80% of farmers in Kedah, Malaysia practice
unsustainable agricultural system due to the pressure of
reaching yield target and poor management system. This
can also be said to other states in Malaysia.
Figure 1. Malaysia’s national GDP as of third quarter 2020
Precision agriculture is closely related to the application
of drone as the smart machinery to accomplish certain tasks
in a more effective, safer, and faster way. Drone is typically
equipped with global positioning system (GPS), propellers,
brushless motors, flight controller, and electronic speed
controller (ESC), and it is controlled by the radio channel
transmitter and receiver. What makes drone interesting is
that it can be modified according to our own needs by
installing some hardware and algorithms on it. It can
perform crucial tasks such as in-depth analysis on the plant
and soil conditions, 3D mapping of the agriculture land,
and pesticides and fertilizer distribution, which is very
difficult to be achieved by manual labor, especially for
thousands of hectares of land. Compared to the remote
sensing using satellites or manned aircrafts, employing
drones in precision agriculture provides a higher
functionality, more cost-effective, and comes with a better
spectral and spatial resolution [5].

67
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
There are several existing review articles or surveys that Multi-rotor can be further divided into single rotor,
are related to the applications of drone in the agriculture quadcopter, hexacopter, and octocopter. Compared to the
sector. Mogili and Deepak [6] only focused on the crop fixed wing drone, multi-rotor has a lower flight speed,
monitoring and pesticide spraying tasks using drone and distance, and duration because it needs a huge amount of
other relevant applications such as land mapping, seed power to generate lift and stays aloft. Table 1 and 2
planting, and livestock monitoring are not reviewed. There compares the different types of drones currently available
is also no emphasis on the agriculture drones available in in the market which can be applied in precision agriculture,
the market. On the other hand, in the Puri et al. [7] survey, specifically for crop spraying and monitoring / mapping
only available commercial agriculture drones in the market purposes, which are the main drone’s applications.
are discussed and the drone's applications in the agriculture
area are not thoroughly explained. Only the general
applications of drone in precision agriculture are discussed
in [8]–[10] but the specific research on the drone’s
applications involving the methodologies and hardware are
not thoroughly reviewed. A review article by Devi et al.
[11] also emphasize on the crop monitoring and pesticide
spraying only. Thus, this survey aims to fill the gap left by
the previous articles, where other applications of drone in
agriculture sector are reviewed. The objective of this
manuscript is to provide a brief information regarding the
applications of drone in the agriculture sector to the new
researchers, including the suitable methodologies and
hardware for the specific tasks and gives some insights on
the most and least explored drone agriculture applications.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. Section II
will cover the current and available drones in the market
that is suitable to accomplish a specific precision
agriculture task. Section III highlights applications of drone
in the agriculture sector conducted over the years. Section
IV and V cover the discussion with future direction of this
topic and conclusion, respectively.

II. COMMERCIAL PRECISION AGRICULTURE DRONES

Drone can be distinguished into fixed wing and multi- Figure 2: (a) Fixed wing, (b) single rotor, (c) quadcopter, (d)
rotor, which can be seen in Figure 2. Fixed wing drone hexacopter, and (e) octocopter drone
consists of a pair of wings which passively generates lift
for the drone as it cut through the air at a specific angle
whereas multi-rotor utilizes the speed and direction of the
motors to move.

68
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
TABLE I
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE DRONE IN THE MARKET SUITABLE FOR CROP SPRAYING TASK

Drone Specifications

Type Flight Time Flowrate Max Distance Tank Capacity

DJI Agras T20 Hexacopter 15 min 6 l/min 3 km 20 l
DJI MG-1P Octocopter 20 min 0.525 l/min 5 km 10 l

MS10 Max Hexacopter 15 min 1.5 l/min 3 km 10 l

Oryctes Dual Hexacopter 15 min 10 l/min 2 km 16 l

Hylio AG-122 Octocopter 15 min 4.3 l/min 2 km 22 l

TABLE II
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE DRONE IN THE MARKET SUITABLE FOR MAPPING AND CROP MONITORING TASK

Drone Specifications

Type Flight Max Speed Max Distance Max Altitude Camera

Time
DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter 30 min 16 m/s 7 km 65 m 20 mp CMOS sensor (GSD down
RTK to 5 cm)

Delair UX11 Fixed-Wing 52 min 15 m/s 47 km 122 m RGB and multispectral camera
(GSD down to 5 cm)

SenseFly eBee Fixed-Wing 55 min 30 m/s 36 km - Dual-purpose RGB and 4-band

Ag multispectral camera (GSD down
to 2.8cm)

DJI Matrice 200 Quadcopter 38 min 22.5 m/s 8 km - Camera comes separately
V2

III. LITERATURE REVIEW
Five different drone applications areas are surveyed in
this article which includes the crop spraying, crop
monitoring, mapping and soil analysis, livestock farming,
and planting tasks. Table 3 shows the different
methodologies and equipment used by other researchers to
accomplish the desired tasks.
A. Crop Spraying
Drone spraying mechanism is very useful in agriculture
sector as it can be applied to spray water, fertilizers, and
pesticides in an efficient way.
69
By implementing this system, farmers can access land
that is either too wet or otherwise inaccessible by humans.
Other benefit of this application is the noninvolvement of
humans from pesticide spraying operation, which greatly
reduce the risk of chemical contamination. Also, the
spraying heights by this mean are usually higher than
conventional ground sprayers, where fragile crops might
experience some damage if the spraying height is too low.
The major downsides of this approach are the limited flying
time and amount of liquid (spraying content) that the drone
can carry. Drone spraying system typically consists of
spray tank to store the liquid and nozzle for spraying.
Pressure pump is usually applied in pesticide spraying but
not in fertilizer spraying.
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
Sadhana et al. [12] developed a quadcopter-type drone
and sprayer mechanism for pesticide spraying. This system
consists of Arduino Uno as a microcontroller, ZigBee
communication module, 180 ml capacity spray tank, and
mini nozzles. This spraying mechanism and has a spraying
capacity of 200 ml per minute. Similar work has been done
by Yallappa et al. [13] but with a greater drone
performance. This hexacopter-type drone is equipped with
spraying mechanism, which consists of 5 l capacity spray
tank and 4 flat fan nozzles, among other equipment.
Findings showed that the drone is capable of spraying 1.15
and 1.08 hectares per hour for groundnut and paddy crop,
respectively.
Qin et al. [14] analyzed the effects of different spraying
heights and concentrations on the deposition of droplets on
the wheat canopy and the prevention of powdery mildew.
A single rotor UAV-N3, equipped with 25 l spray tank was
used to spray the pesticide through two rotary atomizer
nozzles at a flow rate of 850 mL/min. It was found that
spraying the pesticide from 3.5 m height gives the best
droplets coverage rate and uniformity on wheat canopy,
which is higher than ground spraying. For the prevention
against powdery mildew, reducing the original dosage (450
g/hm2) by 20% will provides the best effect. A quadcopter-
type drone was developed by Spoorthi et al. [15] to spray
pesticide and fertilizer and compared to [12] and [13], it
can be controlled via smartphone with the help of Wi-Fi
module. Arduino Mega, adxl 335 accelerometer, mpu-6050
gyro, and hmc5883l magnetometer are combined to
balance the orientations and directions of the drone.
Susitra et al. [16] developed a hexacopter-type
agriculture drone, capable of spraying approximately 1 kg
fertilizer for 15 minutes. It is equipped with PIXHAWK
flight controller and has the automatic landing feature when
the battery is low. MSP430 microcomputer was utilized to
design an automatic drone spray mechanism with on the
single-rotor drone [17]. This system used two centrifugal
rotary atomizer nozzles with 1 l/min flowrate and 25 l tank
capacity. To increase the usage efficiency of pesticide
during spraying, Yanliang et al. [18] introduced an
electrostatic spray system with 0.3 MPa pressure and 10 l
tank capacity and applied it to the hexacopter-type drone.
Based on the results, this system gives a more concentrated
droplet deposition compared to the non-electrostatic spray.
70
Tang et al. [19] analyzed the influence of quadcopter-
type drone’s operational height and crop shape on the
droplet deposition. It was discovered that the best spraying
performance is at 1.2m operation height and droplet
deposition can be improved when applied to the inverted
triangle crop shape.
B. Crop Monitoring
Monitoring the crop condition especially during the
growth stages is essential to farmers. The information
obtained will influence the decision-making on the timely
interventions from the farmers to ensure optimal yield at
the end of the season. Camera plays an important role in
providing the required information on crop condition and
the widely used cameras are digital, thermal, and
multispectral types. Thermal camera equipped with infrared
sensor can develop a thermal map which contains
temperature data of the crop. Digital images from digital
camera can be processed to extract red-green-blue (RGB)
color information whereas multispectral camera can
capture visible and invisible photos of the crop by
employing different wavelengths of light to develop a set of
photos for that wavelength, which is then combined to
produce an accurate mosaic. Normalized difference
vegetation index Drone (NDVI) is often used as indicator
to determine the crop’s condition and it can be obtained
through multispectral imaging based on the following
equation,
(1)
where NIR is the reflection in the near-infrared spectrum
and RED is the reflection in the red range of spectrum.
Other indices commonly applied are normalized difference
red edge (NDRE), visual atmospheric resistance index
(VARI), and soil-adjusted vegetation index [17, 18]. After
analyzing the images, the physical inspection by farmers on
the concern area is highly recommended.
Patel et al. [22] designed a quadcoptrer-type drone for
crop monitoring by integrating the infrared camera and
Matlab programming. The focus is on determining the
condition of the crop (healthy or unhealthy) based on
analyzing the color indicator of the captured infrared
images. A multi-spectral camera (RedEdge) was installed
by Duan et al. [23] on a single-rotor drone to monitor the
condition of wheat by determining the NDVI.
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
Findings showed that NDVI measured by means of
drone and multi-spectral camera were greatly correlated
with the NDVI obtained from handheld GreenSeeker. This
shows that the combined data from ground and aerial
sampling can increase the accuracy of data due to the
multiple scale observations.
Kerkech et al. [24] conducted a research to detect
infected areas of grapevines using drone and RGB sensor
as an imaging system and a combination of convolutional
neural network (CNN) method and color information of the
crop as analyzing system. Different vegetation indices and
color spaces were analyzed, and the results showed that the
combination of Excess Green-Red (ExGR) vegetation
index and YUV color space gives the best result with
accuracy greater than 95.8%. Bendig et al. [25]
demonstrated the acquisition of multispectral and thermal
data in lieu of digital RGB camera for crop monitoring of
sugar beet using octocopter-type drone, Tetracam Mini
MCA (multispectral camera), NEC F30 IS (thermal
camera), and NDVI vegetation index.
C. Mapping and Soil Analysis
Mapping and soil analysis are closely related in a way
that the results from aerial mapping can be used to further
analyze the soil condition and estimate the crop yield.
Mapping can be conducted manually or automatically via
drone according to our pre-defined route. Following this
route, land images are automatically taken by the onboard
camera which later are processed through specific software.
Several research have been conducted for this application,
whether the objective is to analyze soil, mapping, or the
combination of both.
Wu et al. [26] developed a ground-penetrating radar
(GDR) system, which is made up of vector network
analyzer (Planar R60), antenna, GPS, and quadcopter-type
drone for soil moisture mapping and analysis. The soil
moisture is obtained from the radar data by applying full-
wave inverse modelling. The soil moisture maps, which
were developed using kriging interpolation method
corresponds with the aerial orthophotography observations
and topographical conditions of the fields. Huuskonen and
Oksanen [27] presented a soil map acquisition approach
using Dji Phantom 4 Pro for aerial mapping and augmented
reality, which acts as a guide to help farmers in collecting
soil samples. Information such as pH level, soil type, and
chemical contents in the soil can be acquired by this
manner.
71
Von Hebel et al. [28] compared the management zones
acquired from spatial electromagnetic induction (EMI) soil
scanning, fixed wing drone-based NDVI, and the
combination of both. It was found that management zones
delineated from EMI data outperformed the NDVI and the
combination of EMI and NDVI approaches. This further
emphasizes the importance of using the spatially distributed
soil information in crop data interpretation. Pandjaitan et al.
[29] utilized the DJI Phantom 3 Pro drone to obtain and
evaluate the topography condition of about 23 ha
agriculture land. Compared to the terrestrial mapping that
uses theodolite, drone mapping has a lower implementation
cost (RM 6000 or 1500 USD cheaper), faster (about 68
times), and requires lower manpower. A Light Detection
and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor was mounted on the DJI
Matrice 100 drone to map the agriculture land as well as
determining the volume and height of the crops [30]. The
designed drone mapping system is further made up of
Odroid XU4 board, a Point Grey Chameleon3 3.2 MP RGB
camera, a Vectornav VN-200 IMU, and a Trimble BD920
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The best flight
path was determined in terms of LiDAR spatial resolution.
Chen et al. [31] used the information from high-
resolution orthophotos and multispectral images, obtained
from DJI Phantom 4 Pro and Parrot DISCO AG drones to
classify the uses of agricultural land. Interpreting the
orthophotos acquired from DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone yields
the least accurate classification whereas the combination of
orthophotos, multispectral images, and digital surface
model (DSM) data produced the most accurate
classification, with accuracy rate near 90%.
D. Livestock Monitoring
Monitoring the livestock using drones has drawn
considerable attention from the farmers. The livestock
images captured by the drone can be analyzed to determine
the number and behavior of the livestock, which later
transmitted to the monitoring devices in real-time so that
farmers can act accordingly. This approach is very efficient
especially when it comes to monitoring livestock on a large
agricultural land, as well as tracking human poachers. The
common issue of this application is the false classification
of the livestock due to the close features between some
species that leads to the incorrect information sent to the
farmers. Lighting and background effects also play an
important role in portraying false information.
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
Several studies have been conducted focusing on the
implementation of drones in livestock farming. Al-Thani et
al. [32] demonstrated the application of quadcopter-type
drone in sheep livestock monitoring. The developed drone
consists of the ArduPilot Mega (APM) flight controller,
Raspberry Pi Module V2 with machine learning algorithm
to count the sheep and track its movement, and 4G
connection. It was discovered that online processing
produced a more promising results in terms of accuracy
compared to offline processing. Li and Xing [33] studied
the minimum number of drones to be deployed for tracking
and monitoring the maximum number of livestock. A GPS
collar was equipped to each of the livestock so that their
location and condition can be transmitted to the drone’s
receiver. The minimum average drone-animal distance was
also addressed in the study by employing the density-based
clustering algorithm DBSCAN. Compared to the standard
K-Means clustering algorithm, this method produced a
higher number of covered livestock and a lower average
drone-animal distance.
A convolutional neural network (CNN) method was
implemented by Rivas et al. [34] to analyze the images
taken from the GoPro Hero 5 camera, installed on the drone
for the real-time detection of cattle. Raspberry Pi was
integrated into this detection module to run the algorithm
so that the number of livestock can be determined instantly
without having to analyze the images on a remote
computer. Xu [35] employed a Mask R-CNN algorithm to
classify livestock based on the images obtained from DJI
Mavic Pro drone and the experimental results yielded 96%
classification and 92% counting accuracies.
E. Planting
Seed planting using drone can overcome the challenges
faced by manual labor in terms of time and accessibility.
Areas that are obstructed by rivers, hills, and ravines are
high risk for the workers’ safety but can be access by drone
with ease. The seed planting mechanism performance
varies and usually influenced by the canister volume,
battery, and motor. Some researchers only designed the
mechanism and applied it to the commercial drone but
there are others that also developed the drone integrated
with the seed planting mechanism.
72
Nar et al. [36] developed an autonomous quadcopter-
type drone, capable of planting, water and pesticide
spraying, surveying, and measuring the soil water level.
Additional equipment on this drone includes infrared
camera, soil moisture sensor, seed dropping mechanism,
and Bluetooth module to transmit the sensor data from
drone to the smartphone. A seed dropping mechanism
using quadcopter-type drone was developed by Andrio [37]
for revegetation purpose. Compared to [36], an aerial
image of the targeted field is acquired first before designing
the seed dispersing mechanism. Then, the seeds are
dispersed upon reaching the predetermined positions, with
maximum capacity of 60 seeds per minute. A quadcopter-
type drone, capable of dropping 28800 seed balls in 8 hours
was presented by Kumar et al. [38]. This drone has a
payload of 700 g and equipped with Arduino-controlled
conveyor belt to move and release the seed balls.
IV. DISCUSSION
Figure 3 portrays the publication trends regarding the
applications of drone in precision agriculture. The research
in this area is highest for the past four years and is expected
to keep increasing in the future. It can be categorized into
the applications with self-made drone and using the
commercial drone in the market as a medium to achieve the
research outcomes. Drones can be constructed based on
microcontrollers but most of the researchers used flight
controllers due to its stability. Referring to Figure 4 (a),
quadcopter-type drone is the most popular drone when it
comes to performing tasks related to precision agriculture
due to its size, maneuverability, and price. However, it is
not necessarily the best types of drones to be applied. For
crop spraying and seed planting applications, hexacopter or
octocopter-type drone is preferable due to its capability in
carrying more load and if price is not a concern, fixed-wing
drone is more suitable for monitoring and mapping tasks
because of its greater flight time and range.
Designing the autonomous water or pesticide spraying
mechanism is the most popular application of drone in
precision agriculture, as shown in Figure 4 (b). Besides,
crop monitoring and mapping using drone also receive
considerable amount of attention from researchers.
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
TABLE III
DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES AND HARDWARE APPLIED BY OTHER RESEARCHERS.

Application Reference Research Objectives Methodologies

Crop spraying [39] Determine the deposition and movement of Use TTA M8A drone with integrated spraying
droplets at different rotating speeds of rotors system and PIV method for analysis
Crop spraying [40] Determine spray deposition and aerial drift Use Z-3 UAV spray system (20 L tank capacity
during spraying of paddy field and 850 mL/min flowrate)
Crop spraying [41] Determine the effects of rotors rotary speed Design spraying mechanism with using flat fan
on the spray deposition on plant surfaces nozzle with 0.2 MPa pressure and equip it to DJI
S 900 drone
Crop spraying [42] Develop a quadcopter with spraying Use Universal nozzle with 1 L/min flowrate
mechanisms
Crop spraying [43] Develop a spraying mechanism based on Use a Micronair Ultra-Low-Volume (ULV) -A+
PWM controller nozzle with flowrate of 13.61 g/30s and 1.8 L
tank capacity and equip it to RS200 drone
Crop [44] Managing the threat from birds and other Design drone equipped with GoPro camera and
monitoring animals loudspeakers
Crop [45] Determine the number of corn plant Use 3DR SOLO drone with RGB camera and
monitoring DJI Phantom 4 drone equipped with 4
multispectral cameras
Crop [46] Estimate crop yield by analyzing canopy Use DJI Phantom 3 Pro (RGB camera)
monitoring closure from drone images
Crop [47] Determine the mango tree crop line in the Use DJI Phantom 3 (RGB camera) for image
monitoring plantation from drone images acquisition and a combination of YCrCb Color
Space and Hough transform for analysis
Crop [48] Classify vegetation into classes based on the Use Landsat 8 satellite data and DJI Phantom
monitoring satellite data and drone images drone (RGB camera)
Crop [49] Monitoring crop field based on thermal and Use SenseFly eBee drone for aerial images and
monitoring multispectral images computed NDVI, GNDVI, and NDRE indices
Mapping and [50] Determine the impacts of UAV image Use FLIR Systems R60 Skyranger drone (RGB
soil analysis orientation on the accuracy of structure- camera)
from-motion (SfM) 3D surface models
Mapping and [51] Determine soil pH of pineapple crop Use DJI Phantom 4 drone (RGB camera)
soil analysis
Mapping and [52] Detect chemical compounds in the air Develop electronics nose (E-nose) and equip it to
soil analysis commercial drone
Mapping and [53] Develop automatic classification algorithms Use SenseFly eBee drone (RGB camera) for
soil analysis to automatically create weed maps in oat images and compare object and pixel-based
fields classification algorithms
Livestock [54] Automatically tracks the goats’ activity Use DJI Phantom 3 drone (RGB camera)
farming based on images from drone
Livestock [55] Determine the number of animals and Design drone equipped with thermal-infrared
farming differentiate between human and animals camera

73
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
The least explored drone application area is seed
planting. However, drone’s usage in precision agriculture is
still in its early stage and some research articles might be
omitted upon completing this manuscript. The comparison
between different drone application areas in terms of the
parameters’ importance level are listed in Table IV.

Figure 3. Publication trend regarding the applications of drone in

recision agriculture

Most research in this field revolve around farmers acting

as pilot for the drone, where in fact this can be
autonomously done, and farmers can focus on other crucial
tasks. Available agriculture drones in the market still lack
flying time and farmers needs to have in-depth knowledge
in post processing the images captured by the drone to
determine the desired parameters, especially in crop
monitoring and mapping tasks. On-board analysis and
decision-making without farmers intervention are expected
to become the future research direction whereas agriculture
drones with longer flight time, improved camera quality,
and autonomous feature might be the focus of drone-
making companies. In addition, the integration of long
range (LoRa) communication network with drone are also
on the rise [56]. Currently, the cost of employing
agriculture drone is still high but expected to decrease over Figure 4. (a) Types of drone used by other researchers over the years
the years due to the advancement of technology. and (b) Types of drone’s applications in the precision agriculture
sector based on surveying more than 50 articles

74
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
TABLE IV
THE IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENT PARAMETERS IN THE DRONE APPLICATION AREA.

Parameter Drone Application

Crop Crop Mapping and Livestock farming Planting

spraying monitoring soil analysis

Flight time High High High High High

Altitude Medium High High High Medium

Distance High High High High High

Camera Low High High High Low

Payload High Low Low Low Medium

Government also needs to play a role in regulating the REFERENCES

drone’s usage policies to ease the farmers or agriculture
drone’s usage policies to ease the farmers or agriculture
companies in utilizing drones.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper surveys commercial agriculture drone and the
applications of drone in precision agriculture performed by
researchers such as crop spraying, soil analysis, mapping,
crop monitoring, livestock farming, and seed planting.
Based on reviewing more than 50 articles, quadcopter-type
drone is the most applied and developed drone in this area
and seed planting using drone is the least explored task.
Employing drones in agriculture will become more popular
as it can also be tailored to our specific needs if the relevant
knowledge and hardware are available. Currently, the
applications of drone in precision agriculture are still not
fully matured as some farmers especially in rural areas are
not exposed to this kind of technology.
Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Synvue Sdn Bhd (1236749-D)
for insights and feedback of the project development. This
work was supported by the Collaborative Research in
Engineering, Science, and Technology (CREST) under
grant 304/PELECT/6050424/C121.
[1] Gebbers, R. and Adamchuk, V. I. (2010) Precision Agriculture and
Food Security, Sci., vol. 327, no. 5967: 828–831.
[2] Pierce, F. J. and Nowak, P. (1999) Aspects of Precision Agriculture,
Adv. Agron., vol. 67, 1–85.
[3] (2020) Malaysia Economic Performance Third Quarter 2020.
Department of Statistics Malaysia.
https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cthemeByCat&c
at=100&bul_id=ZlRNZVRDUmNzRFFQQ29lZXJoV0UxQT09&m
enu_id=TE5CRUZCblh4ZTZMODZIbmk2aWRRQT09. Accessed 1
April 2020.
[4] Mohamed, Z., Terano, R., Shamsudin, M. N., and Latif, A. I. (2016)
Paddy Farmers’ Sustainability Practices in Granary Areas in
Malaysia, Resour., vol. 5, no. 2: 1–11.
[5] Michels, M., von Hobe, C F., and Musshoff, O. (2020) A Trans-
Theoretical Model for the Adoption of Drones by Large-Scale
German Farmers, J. Rural Stud., vol. 75, 80–88.
[6] Mogili, U. M. R. and Deepak, B. B. V. L. (2018) Review on
Application of Drone Systems in Precision Agriculture, Procedia
Comput. Sci., vol. 133, 502–509.
[7] Puri, V., Nayyar, A., and Raja, L. (2017) Agriculture Drones: A
Modern Breakthrough in Precision Agriculture, J. Stat. Manag. Syst.,
vol. 20, no. 4: 507-518.
[8] Dileep M R., Navaneeth A V., Ullagaddi S. and Danti A. (2020) A
Study and Analysis on Various Types of Agricultural Drones and its
Applications, in Fifth Int. Conf. Res. Comput. Intell. Commun.
Netw., Bangalore, India, 181–185.
[9] Ahirwar, S., Swarnkar, R., Bhukya, S., and Namwade, G. (2019)
Application of Drone in Agriculture, Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. Appl.
Sci., vol. 8, no. 1: 2500–2505.

75
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
[10] Veroustraete, F. (2015) The Rise of the Drones in Agriculture, EC
Agric., vol. 2, no. 2: 325–327.
[11] Devi, K. G., Sowmiya, N., Yasoda, K., Muthulakshmi, K., and
Kishore, B. (2020) Review on Application of Drones for Crop
Health Monitoring and Spraying Pesticides and Fertilizer, J. Crit.
Rev., vol. 7, no. 6: 667–672.
[12] Yallappa, D., Veerangouda, M., Maski, D., Palled, V., and
Bheemanna, M. (2017) Development and Evaluation of Drone
Mounted Sprayer for Pesticide Applications to Crops, in 2017 IEEE
Global Humanitarian Technol. Conf., San Jose, CA, USA, 1–7.
[13] Qin, W., Xue, X., Zhang, S., Gu, W., and Wang, B. (2018) Droplet
Deposition and Efficiency of Fungicides Sprayed with Small UAV
against Wheat Powdery Mildew, J. Agric. Biol. Eng., vol. 11, no. 2:
27–32.
[14] Spoorthi, S., Shadaksharappa, B., Suraj, S., and Manasa, V. K.
(2017) Freyr Drone: Pesticide/Fertilizers Spraying Drone-An
Agricultural Approach, in 2nd Int. Conf. Comput. Commun.
Technol., Chennai, India, 252–255.
[15] Susitra, D., Jebaseeli, E. A. E., Chitturi, V. K., and Chadalavada, V.
(2020) Design and Development of an Hexacopter for Fertlizer
Spraying in Agriculture Fields, in First Int. Conf. Adv. Phys. Sci.
Mater., Coimbatore, India, 1–8.
[16] Xue, X., Lan, Y., Sun, Z., Chang, C., and Hoffmann, W. C. (2016)
Develop an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based Automatic Aerial
Spraying System, Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 128, 58–66.
[17] Yanliang, Z., Qi, L., and Wei, Z. (2017) Design and Test of a Six-
Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Electrostatic Spraying
System for Crop Protection, Int. J. Agric. Biol. Eng., vol. 10, no. 6:
68–76.
[18] Tang, Y., Hou, C. J., Luo, S. M., Lin, J. T., Yang, Z., and Huang, W.
F. (2018) Effects of Operation Height and Tree Shape on Droplet
Deposition in Citrus Trees Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,
Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 148, 1–7.
[19] Xue, J. and Su, B. (2017) Significant Remote Sensing Vegetation
Indices: A Review of Developments and Applications, J. Sensors,
vol. 2017.
[20] Wilson, N. R., Norman, L. M., Villarreal, M., Gass, L., Tiller. R.,
and Salywon, A. (2016) Comparison of Remote Sensing Indices for
Monitoring of Desert Cienegas, Arid L. Res. Manag., vol. 30, no. 4:
460–478.
[21] Patel, P. N., Patel, M .A., Faldu, R. M., and Dave, Y. R. (2013)
Quadcopter for Agricultural Surveillance, Adv. Electron. Electr.
Eng., vol. 3, no. 4: 427–432.
[22] Duan, T., Chapman, S. C., Guo, Y., and Zheng, B. (2017) Dynamic
Monitoring of NDVI in Wheat Agronomy and Breeding Trials Using
an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, F. Crop. Res., vol. 210, 71–80.
[23] Kerkech, M., Hafiane, A., and Canals, R. (2018) Deep Leaning
Approach with Colorimetric Spaces and Vegetation Indices for Vine
Diseases Detection in UAV Images, Comput. Electron. Agric., vol.
155, 237–243.
[24] Bendig, J., Bolten, A., and Bareth, G. (2012) Introducing a Low-
Cost Mini UAV for Thermal and Multispectral Imaging, in Int.
Arch. Photogrammetry, Remote Sens. Spatial Inform. Sci.,
Melbourne, Australia, 345–349.
[25] Wu, K., Rodriguez, G. A., Zajc, M., Jacquemin, E., Clement, M., de
Coster, A., and Lambot, S. (2019) A New Drone-Borne GPR for Soil
Moisture Mapping, Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 235, 111456.
76
[26] Huuskonen, J. and Oksanen, T. (2018) Soil Sampling with Drones
and Augmented Reality in Precision Agriculture, Comput. Electron.
Agric., vol. 154, 25–35.
[27] von Hebel, C., Reynaert, S., Pauly, K., Janssens, P., Piccard, I.,
Vanderborght, J., van der Kruk, J., Vereecken, H,. and Garre, S.
(2020) Toward High-Resolution Agronomic Soil Information and
Management Zones Delineated by Ground-Based Electromagnetic
Induction and Aerial Drone Data, Vadose Zone J., 1–18.
[28] Pandjaitan, N. H., Rau, M. I., Sutoyo, K. T. U., Waspodo, R. S. B.,
and Mustikasari, N. (2019) Efficient Mapping for Fodder
Cultivation with Commercial Small Drone, in Int. Conf. Digital
Agric. Land Consum., Bogor, Indonesia, vol. 335, 1–8.
[29] Christiansen, M. P., Laursen, M. S., Jørgensen, R. N., Skovsen, S.,
and Gislum, R. (2017) Designing and Testing a UAV Mapping
System for Agricultural Field Surveying, Sensors, vol. 17, no. 12: 1–
19.
[30] Chen, P. C., Chiang, Y. C., and Weng, P. Y. (2020) Imaging Using
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Agriculture Land Use Classification,
Agric., vol. 10, no. 9: 1–14.
[31] Al-Thani, N., Albuainain, A., Alnaimi, F., and Zorba, N. (2020)
Drones for Sheep Livestock Monitoring, in IEEE 20th Mediterr.
Electrotechnical Conf., Palermo, Italy, 672–676.
[32] Li, X. and Xing, L. (2019) Reactive Deployment of Autonomous
Drones for Livestock Monitoring Based on Density-based
Clustering, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Biomimetics, Dali, China, 2421–2426.
[33] Rivas, A., Chamoso, P., González-Briones, A., and Corchado, J. M.
(2018) Detection of Cattle Using Drones and Convolutional Neural
Networks, Sensors, vol. 18, no. 7: 1–15.
[34] Xu, B., Wang, W., Falzon, G., Kwan, P., Guo, L., Sun, Z., and Li, C.
(2020) Livestock Classification and Counting in Quadcopter Aerial
Images Using Mask R-CNN, Int. J. Remote Sens., vol. 41, no. 21:
8121–8142.
[35] Nar, P., Amin, S. S., Banerjee, S., Garg, V., and Pardasani, A.
(2020) Autonomous Multifunctional Quadcopter for Real-Time
Object Tracking and Seed Bombing in a Dynamic Environment, in
Emerging Technologies for Agriculture and Environment,
Subramanian B., Chen S S. and Reddy K R. Ed. Singapore:
Springer, 199–211.
[36] Andrio, A. Development of UAV Technology in Seed Dropping for
Aerial Revegetation Practices in Indonesia, in Int. Symp.
Bioremediation Biomater Revegetation Conserv., Bogor, Indonesia,
1–6.
[37] Manoharan, A. K., Telagam, N., Mohankumar, N., Ismail, K. M.,
and Rajasekar, T. (2020) Design and Implementation of Real-Time
Amphibious Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System for Sowing Seed
Balls in the Agriculture Field, Int. J. Emerg. Technol., vol. 11, no. 2:
213–218.
[38] Qing, T, Ruirui, Z., Liping, C., Min, X., Tongchuan, Y., and Bin, Z.
(2017) Droplets Movement and Deposition of an Eight- Rotor
Agricultural UAV in Downwash Flow Field, Int. J. Agric. Biol.
Eng., vol. 10, no. 3: 47–56.
[39] Xinyu, X., Kang, T., Weicai, Q., Yubin, L., and Huihui, Z. (2014)
Drift and Deposition of Ultra-Low Altitude and Low Volume
Application in Paddy Field, Int. J. Agric. Biol. Eng., vol. 7, no. 4:
23–28
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (E-ISSN 2250-2459, Scopus Indexed, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 12, Issue 04, April 2022)
[40] Berner, B. and Chojnacki, J. (2017) Use of Drones in Crop
Protection, in Farm Mach. Processes Manag. Sustain. Agric., IX Int.
Sci.Symp., Lublin, Poland, 46–51.
[41] Meivel, S., Maguteeswaran, R., Gandhiraj, N., and Srinivasan, G.
(2016) Quadcopter UAV Based Fertilizer and Pesticide Spraying
System, Int. Acad. Res. J. Eng. Sci., vol. 1, no. 1: 8–12.
[42] Zhu, H., Lan, Y., Wu, W., Hoffmann, W. C., Huang, Y., Xue, X.,
Liang, J., and Fritz, B. (2010) Development of a PWM Precision
Spraying Controller for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, J. Bionic Eng.,
vol. 7, no. 3: 276–283.
[43] Hasan, K. M., Suhaili, W. S., Newaz, S. H. S. and Ahsan, M. S.
(2020) Development of an Aircraft Type Portable Autonomous
Drone for Agricultural Applications, in 2020 Int. Conf. Comput. Sci.
Its Appl. Agric., Bogor, Indonesia, 1–5.
[44] García-Martínez, H., Flores-Magdaleno, H., Khalil-Gardezi, A.,
Ascencio-Hernandez, R., Tijerina-Chavez, L., Vazquez-Pena, M. A.,
and Mancilla-Villa, O. R. (2020) Digital Count of Corn Plants Using
Images Taken by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Cross Correlation
of Templates, Agronomy, vol. 10, no. 4: 469.
[45] Sanches, G. M., Duft, D. G., Kolln, O. T., Luciano, A. C. S., de
Castro, S. G. Q., Okuno, F. M., and Franco, H. C. J. (2018) The
Potential for RGB Images Obtained Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
to Assess and Predict Yield in Sugarcane Fields, Int. J. Remote
Sens., vol. 39, no. 15–16: 5402–5414.
[46] Quiroz, R. A. A., Guidotti, F. P., and Bedoya, A. E. (2019) A
Method for Automatic Identification of Crop Lines in Drone Images
from a Mango Tree Plantation Using Segmentation over YCrCb
Color Space and Hough Transform, in XXII Symp. Image Signal
Process. Artif. Vision, Bucaramanga, Colombia, 1–5.
[47] Murugan, D., Garg, A., Ahmed, T., and Singh, D. (2016) Fusion of
Drone and Satellite Data for Precision Agriculture Monitoring, in
11th Int. Conf. Ind. Inform. Syst. Roorkee, India, 1–5.
77
View publication stats
[48] Raeva, P. L., Šedina, J., and Dlesk, A. (2019) Monitoring of Crop
Fields Using Multispectral and Thermal Imagery from UAV, Eur. J.
Remote Sens., vol. 52, no. sup1: 192–201.
[49] Meinen, B. U. and Robinson, D. T. (2020) Mapping Erosion and
Deposition in an Agricultural Landscape: Optimization of UAV
Image Acquisition Schemes for SfM-MVS, Remote Sens. Environ.,
vol. 239, 1–10.
[50] Jack, R., Mohidin, H., Tamrin, K. F., Banchit, A., Khan, M. Y. M.
A., Narawi, A., and Dollah, N. (2019) Soil pH Mapping of Pineapple
Crop: A Feasibility Study Using Aerial Photo, in 2019 Int. Conf.
Comput. Drone Appl., Kuching, Malaysia, 1–4.
[51] Pobkrut, T., Eamsa-Ard, T., and Kerdcharoen, T. (2016) Sensor
Drone for Aerial Odor Mapping for Agriculture and Security
Services, in 13th Int. Conf. Electr. Eng./Electron. Comput.
Telecommun. Inf. Technol., Chiang Mai, Thailand, 1–5.
[52] Gašparović, M., Zrinjski, M., Barković, Đ., and Radočaj, D. (2020)
An Automatic Method for Weed Mapping in Oat Fields Based on
UAV Imagery, Comput. Electron. Agric., vol. 173, 1–12.
[53] Vassilyev, S. N., Kelina, A. Y., Kudinov, Y. I., and Pashchenko, F.
F. (2017) Intelligent Control Systems, Procedia Comput. Sci., vol.
103, 623–628.
[54] Longmore, S. N., Collins, R. P., Pfeifer, S., Fox, S. E., Mulero-
Pazmany, M., Bezombes, F., Goodwin, A., Ovelar, M. D. J.,
Knapen, J. H., and Wich, S. A. (2017) Adapting Astronomical
Source Detection Software to Help Detect Animals in Thermal
Images Obtained by Unmanned Aerial Systems, Int. J. Remote
Sens., vol. 38, no. 8–10: 2623–2638.
[55] Ghazali, M. H. M., Teoh, K., and Rahiman, W (2021) A Systematic
Review of Real-Time Deployments of UAV-Based LoRa
Communication Network. IEEE Access, vol. 9: 124917-124830.