Partnership Delivers Crop Health Analysis Using Near-Infrared and Multispectral Sensors

DroneDeploy, the leading drone software platform, today announced new capabilities to help growers perform more accurate plant health analysis and process high-quality maps during all stages of crop growth. Retailers and growers can now use DroneDeploy to create field maps using sensors designed for agriculture, including Sentera near-infrared and Slantrange calibrated multi-spectral sensors. 

“We’ve listened to our customers’ requests and worked with leading technology partners in the industry to help growers detect crop variability sooner and compare plant health over time,” said DroneDeploy CEO and co-founder Mike Winn. 

In addition, DroneDeploy released improvements to its proprietary map processing algorithms-- just in time to address some of the most common challenges growers face when mapping late-stage crops.

“Until now, 'stitching' late stage crops has remained an unsolved problem in image processing,” said Nick Pilkington, CTO and co-founder of DroneDeploy. “We’re excited to deliver a solution to our customers that lets them create high quality maps at all stages of crop growth.”

Retailers and growers looking to use drones have many different hardware options to choose from -- and now they have more freedom than ever to use the camera or sensor of their choice with DroneDeploy. While most growers begin with the visible spectrum cameras that come standard on drones like the DJI Phantom 4 Pro, many turn to sensors designed specifically for agriculture in order to perform more accurate, scientific analysis of plant health.

Now DroneDeploy customers can fly and capture imagery and process and interpret maps using sensors from Sentera and Slantrange, all compatible with the latest DJI drones. To create a DroneDeploy map with these sensors, users should install the free Slantrange, or Sentera application within DroneDeploy, fly using the DroneDeploy mobile app, and upload imagery to DroneDeploy for processing. Once the map is complete, users will be able to view, analyze and share plant health data specific to the sensor used, providing an end-to-end solution all within the DroneDeploy software suite.

The supported near-infrared sensors from Sentera, including the High-Precision NDVI Single sensor and the Sentera Double 4K, allow growers to create NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) maps to accurately detect crop stress.

"Sentera is excited to bring our most popular and most affordable high-precision NDVI sensor to the DroneDeploy platform. We’re committed to supporting our customers' preferred workflows and enabling an open and accessible set of downstream analytics based on genuine NDVI and other index products,” said Eric Taipale, Sentera's CEO. “Our partnership with DroneDeploy does just that, providing DroneDeploy users a seamless integration with Sentera’s high-quality sensors going forward.”