Every morning a remote drone scout flies from its docking station to patrol the farm.
Its sensors check each field for fall armyworm, which upon detection will upload the GPS location and intensity data before deciding if it should automatically activate robotic sprayers to hit the pest before it causes crop damage.
Meanwhile, the farmer who may be many kilometres away is attending to other business and is aware of the scout's progress to target the young FAW grubs via an app.
While this scenario may sound like science-fiction, it's probably going to be a normal part of the grower arsenal against FAW in the next two or three years.
According to University of Southern Queensland Centre for Agricultural Engineering Senior Research Fellow (Irrigation and Cropping Systems) Dr Alison McCarthy, remote electronic scout monitoring has enormous potential to help growers protect their crops from the endemic pest.
Dr McCarthy recently gave a presentation on her remote drone scout project at the 2024 National Fall Armyworm Symposium where it attracted strong interest.
A mechatronic research engineer, Dr McCarthy said the reality of this automated robotic scout project iwas well on the way to being a valuable resource to target the insect pest at early stages of their growth.
"The remote scout can link in with a drone docking station where it will automatically charge and can be programmed to be sent off on a mission to detect FAW " she said.
"It will help automate farm work as you don;t even need a person there to supervise."
Dr McCarthy said the scout had been successfully tested on plots of sorghum, maize and sweet corn.
"We are applying a combination of already available technology with our specialised algorithm generated software," she said.
"The system we developed for this auto-scouting uses off-the-shelf drones which are already available and many growers had had experience with these previously.
"This project also focuses on FAW in developmental stage of first or second instar."
Dr McCarthy said as hardware and software development rapidly advances the present system which used a memory card which the grower would have to physically remove from the scout drone and insert int a computer to upload images would soon be superseded by a automatic real-time upload.
"For each image the program produces a map and also calculates an overall location including the FAW percentage to understand the over impact," she said.
"The scout provides data which would enable the grower to see the percentage of fall armyworm in their crop so they can determine if they have reached the point where then need to spray.
"The remote scout is perfect for daily monitoring as FAW populations can rapidly change."
Dr McCarthy said she had spent the past three years working on the project and felt confident it would make a positive difference to growers impacted by FAW.
"We started with data collection within a plot trial at the QDAF Gatton research station and looked at different levels of pest damage," she said.
"Trials have also been held in the Lockyer Valley, Kingaroy, far north Queensland and the Darling Downs on different farms."
Dr McCarthy said the scout had identified FAW in sorghum, maize, wheat and sweet corn crops with a 75 per cent accuracy rate.
She said the rate which was the required level required by project's perimeters was achieved with 'blind testing'.
"This rate was determined by using the scouts on unseen field which the camera system and algorithms had not previously been exposed to," Dr McCarthy said.
"Looking forward we want to be able to use this drone scout technology in other possible crop scenarios, such as other insect pests, herbicide damage, other disease and stresses caused from moisture and fertiliser.
"Now we have completed this stage of the research in the next stage we look at how it works in the broader scale trials," she said.
"We have been working with our funders QDAF to plan out the commercialism stage and how this will be achieved.
"We hope within the next two years to be able to release a commercial model so we probably want beta testing in the next 12 months
"The agronomy groups w have been in contact with are keen to be involved and have offered a site to test the next round and agronomists are also our target end-user."
Share your FAW experience. Contact Alison Paterson on 0437 861 082.
