-
CROW
CROW: Now a Farmers Best Friend
October 19, 2017
CROW
CROW was designed for the 2017 Land O’lakes Drone Challenge, where they required teams to be able to record orthorectified crop images, and autonomously determine an appropriate flight path to image a field, after having received a file that has field bounds. It also had to be capable of autonomously operating (i.e. take off, collect data, land, transmit data), as well as function unattended for multiple days, take multiple flights per day, use wireless connectivity to transmit and receive data, operate in winds of up to 32km/h, and use data connection to determine if weather conditions are safe for flight.
The team placed top 3 out of 150 teams worldwide!

CROW at the Land O’Lakes Challenge in Minnesota.

Manufacturing team prepping the mould for the Fibre Glass layup
Technical Specifications:
FLIGHT TIME | 65 minutes |
IMAGING SENSOR | Slantrange 3P – other sensors can be implemented. |
FLIGHTBOARD & NAVIGATION | Pixhawk 2 with Dual GPS modules – RTK Module set allows for accuracy of 3-10cm. |
WINGSPAN | 2000mm |
LENGTH | 1000mm |
HEIGHT (TAIL TO BASE) | 450mm |
WEIGHT | 3.8kg (including airframe, electronics and sensors) |
CRUISE SPEED | 100km/h |
STALL SPEED | 48km/h |
MAXIMUM ALTITUDE | 800m |
ENDURANCE | 100km/h for one hour plus five minutes of vertical flight. |
MTOW | 4.2kg |
MAX. DATA RANGE | 520 acres/hr at 20m/s (assuming one large field and returning back to the base station) or 5.2 acres to 70 acres fields in a 2.4km radius at 20m/s |
Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the team during the challenge!