INSECTS – REDUCE SERIOUS DAMAGE TO AGRICULTURAL CROPS
How to deal with them without chemistry and harm to plants? Recently, the Pats technological company offered an interesting solution: Drones of Pats-X, which recognize and destroy harmful insects.
Initially, the drones were developed by one of the co-founders of the Pats startup. As an experiment, he came up with a mechanism that helps get rid of annoying mosquitoes that prevented him from sleeping. The idea formed the basis of the project to combat mole and other pests in large-scale greenhouses.
“We want to create a system that will work autonomously and efficiently without requiring human intervention,” says Diano Yansen, a graduate student of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.
The Pats system consists of two components: Pats-C and Pats-X. The first is a network of infrared cameras posted throughout the greenhouse and connected to the Internet. They monitor insects flying over plants and, with the help of artificial intelligence, determine their type, size, and frequency of wing waves. If the insect is useful for crops (for example, a bee), it is left alone. If a pest is found, Pats-X comes into play.
Pats-X is a detachment of small quadcopters, which are charged at wireless docking stations. When Pats-C discovers the pest, it activates the drone and directs it to the goal. The device crashes into the insect at high speed and then returns to the station.
It turned out that the drones not only catch pests but also affect their behavior with their noise. The study of Diano Yansen showed that the sound of drones makes insects change their flight path. “After a thorough analysis, we found that the drones produce ultrasound in the same range as bats, natural enemies of pests in a natural environment,” the scientist says. “Some insects ignore the noise and quickly die, but for those who are scared, we enhance the sound with speakers, creating an environment in which pests can no longer move.”
Thus, Pats uses not only a physical clash but also an ultrasound effect to combat pests.
According to the company, the Pats system is already used by European