INTELINAIR, INC. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.13

Description

Specialty crops such as pineapple and other tropical fruits beverage and nut crops are importantcomponents of the economy of Hawaii the subtropical areas of the mainland U.S. and many othertropical areas around the world. Significant opportunities exist to improve productivity harvestefficiency and reduce in-field losses by the application and integration of new technologies. Onesuch example is to manage the variability in pineapple field fruit maturity caused by naturalflowering cycles. Management can then better synchronize harvesting across the entire fieldreducing field losses and the need for multiple harvests. The ability to obtain real-time data onfield conditions and the stage of crop development is critical to estimating crop yield takingcorrective actions and planning harvest dates and marketing. GPS mapping of field locations willalso enable observations to be made following adverse weather conditions and prioritize recoveryefforts.IntelinAir is partnering with the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Tropical Agricultureand Human Resources to propose research on the analysis of low altitude high resolution aerialimagery to improve decisions in the cultivation and harvest of pineapple. The proposed solutionconsists of capturing aerial imagery via a drone analyzing this imagery using computer vision andmachine learning techniques and presenting actionable intelligence via an iPad dashboard to assistgrowers in making data-driven decisions. The drone proposed for this project will leverage cuttingedge L1 robust adaptive flight control technology licensed by IntelinAir. The L1 drone technologyhas the important feature of reliable flight in the trade winds present in Hawaii while followingprecise flight paths and providing a stable platform for superior imaging. Analysis of highresolution images will identify the extent of non-uniform flowering across pineapple fields. Thisfirst step will provide data to expand the application to other phases of pineapple crop developmentand other tropical fruit nut and beverage crops.Insights from this analysis will enable growers to improve production efficiency knowing whereto spray targeted flower-inducing compounds to even out fruit maturation and harvest across thegrowers' fields. This will help to reduce harvest labor improve equipment utilization reduceshipping costs reduce field losses and ultimately improve the competitiveness of the domesticpineapple industry. These techniques can also be applied to pineapple fields in other areas of theU.S. and abroad. Beyond pineapple we believe that this approach based on diagnostic cropdevelopmental identifiers would potentially extend to other specialty fruits and vegetables grownacross the U.S.