Eight tennis courts in six minutes! Drones are used to help the aging agricultural workforce… “Stringing up bird tresses!

A savior for the labor shortage!

The number of farmers in Japan is decreasing year by year, and moreover, the average age of farmers is getting older. According to the most recent data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the average age is now over 68 years old, and this is due to the fact that successors are hard to find.

In the case of salaried workers, those who have long since retired are the mainstay of the farming industry. Drones are expected to be the new weapon that will be the savior of labor-saving work in such a severely understaffed agricultural industry.

Drones are being used to stretch “tegus” in rice paddies to prevent bird damage…

Drones are already being used for transporting goods, and they are also beginning to be used in agriculture for sowing seeds and spraying pesticides and fertilizers.

In addition, a demonstration experiment was conducted this time to test the use of Tegusu, which is said to be effective in preventing damage by crows and other birds in rice paddies. The results were confirmed by stretching nylon and other synthetic fibers used as fishing line low and evenly spaced across the rice paddies. The company developing the drone is C.I. Robotics (Oita City).

In June of this year, C.I. Robotics conducted a demonstration experiment using a drone to lay down bird-safe tress in rice paddies in Usuki City, Oita Prefecture. The company erected poles more than one meter high at two-meter intervals at both ends of the rice paddies, and stretched the tugs over the poles.

A company representative said, “Until now, people have had to enter the rice paddies to stretch the strings.

Eight tennis courts can be covered in six minutes…” The demonstration test was conducted on a 20-area field (2000 square meters)!

The demonstration test was conducted in a 20-are (2,000 square meters/equivalent to eight tennis courts) rice paddy. In addition to the drone operator, a person was stationed at each end of the rice field where a support pole stood, and a total of three people finished stretching a total of 800 meters of tesu in six minutes. The person at the support poles caught the drone-carried strings and placed them on the poles.

If it were done by human labor alone, it would take 30 to 40 minutes for a person to enter the rice paddies carrying the strings,” said a company representative.

In this drone-based tegus tensioning, a chain is first suspended from the drone to prevent the tegus from getting caught in the drone’s propeller, and then the chain is attached to the bottom of the tegus. A company representative said, “This is just for verification purposes.

We are currently testing the system, but we will refine it for commercial use, hopefully as early as next year,” said a company representative.

The company is also conducting a demand survey and aims to sell the product in 2012. One drone used for this demonstration test will cost about 2.5 million yen.

Ideally, everything should be done by drones.”

In paddy direct seeding, where seeds are sown directly in the rice paddies, it is said that crows, pigeons, sparrows, and other birds can cause damage during the germination and seedling emergence phases. It seems that birds do not like to have their wings damaged by tegus when they fly away. It is hoped that stretching the tegus will be effective in preventing birds.

C.I. Robotics is developing drones for direct seeding of seeds, insecticides and fungicides, and fertilizers for paddy rice, and they are beginning to be used in some areas.

Ideally, we would like to be able to do everything with drones, but we don’t have an all-in-one solution yet.”

For example, he says, direct seeding can be done by a person in a single row, but with a drone it is sparse and uneven, and the seed cannot be sown evenly.

If drones can help in the rice paddies, from sowing seeds to spreading pesticides and fertilizers to stretching the tegus, it would be a great help to agricultural fields that are short on manpower.

C.I. Robotics expects that the use of bird line can be extended not only to rice paddies, but also to orchards. C.I. Robotics develops not only the drones themselves, but also the equipment for stretching the tugs.

There are only a limited number of companies that are capable of developing equipment,” says a C.I. Robotics representative.

The company’s representative says, “There are only a limited number of companies that can develop the equipment properly.

Expectations are high in the forestry industry, where manpower shortages are serious…

C.I. Robotics hopes to expand the use of drones not only in the agricultural field, but also in the forestry field. In the forestry industry, where manpower shortages are as serious as in agriculture, surveys of forests to determine the types of trees and how they are growing are indispensable. Until now, people have been going into the mountains to visually inspect and check the forests. Aerial photos taken by airplanes have also been used in some cases to survey forests.

In the future, as aerial photography using drones advances, it will become easier to conduct forest surveys in mountains that have been difficult for people to penetrate, and this could lead to dramatic progress.

Expectations are high as to whether drones will be the savior in a field where manpower is in short supply.