Possible Applications of a Rotary UAV for Close-up Inspection of Orchards

This document is written as part of a doctoral research project in which an unmanned helicopter is designed, built and tested with the goal of close-up inspection of orchards. This document gives an overview of possible applications for an unmanned helicopter platform that flies in between rows of fruit trees in an orchard. By flying in between tree rows and looking sideward it is believed to be able to extract much higher resolution data from the trees which can help with early detection of several stresses, such as disease and water stress or make accurate estimations of the production yield. In addition, there are several trends towards the future that make this type of UAV more suitable than overflying UAVs. An Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) is the combination of a UAV with a ground station, a device that (partially) controls and monitors the UAV, and the communications between them.status: publishe