MONSTER, The Netherlands (AP) – Dutch farmer Rob Baan has hired high-tech helpers to fight a plague in his greenhouses: palm-sized drones search for and destroy caterpillar-producing moths that can chew their crops.
“I have unique products where you don’t get certified to spray chemicals and I don’t want them,” Baan said in an interview in a greenhouse bathed in the pink light of LED lights that help grow his seedlings. His company, Koppert Cress, exports aromatic seedlings, plants and flowers to high-end restaurants around the world.
Easy adopter of innovative technology in their greenhouses, Baan turned to PATS Indoor Drone Solutions, a startup that develops standalone drone systems such as greenhouse sentries, to add another layer of protection to its plants.
The drones themselves are basic, but they are driven by smart technology aided by special cameras that explore the airspace of greenhouses.
Drones instantly kill moths by flying at them, destroying them in the air.
“So he sees the flying moth, he knows where the drone is … and then he points the drone at the moth,” PATS chief technical officer Kevin van Hecke said.
There were no moths on a recent visit to The Associated Press’s greenhouse, but the company has released a video shot in a controlled environment showing how a bug is instantly sprayed by a drone rotor.
Unmanned aircraft are part of a number of pest control systems in Baan greenhouses that also include other insects, pheromone traps and bumblebees.
The drone system is an idea former Delft Technical University students who came up with the idea after wondering if they could use drones to kill mosquitoes boiling in their rooms at night.
Baan says the drone control system is smart enough to distinguish between good and bad.
“You don’t want to kill a ladybug, because a ladybug is very useful against aphids,” he said. “Therefore, they should kill the bad guys, not the good guys. And the bonds are sometimes very expensive: I pay at least 50 cents for a bumblebee, so I don’t want them to kill my bumblebees.
The young company continues to work to perfect the technology.
“It’s still a development product, but … we have very good results. We are aiming for the moths and we remove the moths every night autonomously without human intervention “, said the general director of PATS, Bram Tijmons. “I think it’s a good step forward.”
Baan also acknowledges that the system still needs to be refined.
“I think they still need too many drones … but it will be manageable, it will be less,” he said. “I think they can make this greenhouse in the future maybe with 50 small drones, and then it’s very beneficial.”