Agricultural distributor Heinan Brothers Agra Services – best known for its manned aircraft for spraying fields – is moving into the unmanned space with a new subsidiary called Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems, which touts that it offers “the world’s most advanced platform for air and ground-based agricultural robotics.”

To celebrate the launch, Kelly Hills is hosting an agricultural drone test event in Kansas next week (August 22) using Pyka’s Pelican Spray, which is said to be the largest commercially available unmanned aerial system (UAS) in the United States.

Kelly Hills is the first U.S. customer for Pelican Spray, the largest UAS approved for commercial use by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said Lukas Koch, CTO of Heinan Bros and new CEO of Kelly Hills.

“As experts in aerial applications, we see the potential of UAS to revolutionize our industry and provide significant cost savings to American farmers. Pelican Spray is the first autonomous agricultural solution that offers the manpower and spray performance needed to provide a viable commercial solution to augment our current fleet.

“Ultimately, we want to ensure the safety of our manned aircraft pilots, so we are taking a proactive approach that allows UAS to handle certain workloads so our traditional pilots can return home safely to their families and loved ones.”

Pelican Spray will conduct a live flight demonstration on August 22 at the Kelly Hills kick-off event in Seneca, Kansas. The event is open to customers, dealers, researchers, policy makers and agricultural industry leaders.

49,000 square mile drone test site spans four states

Through a collaboration with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the FAA has approved a 49,000-square-mile unmanned aerial systems test site in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa. This will allow for advanced drone testing of systems not directly available to the public, Koch said.

“The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in agriculture is growing faster in other countries than here in the United States. We invite American agricultural experts and international stakeholders to Kansas on August 22 to look beyond the horizon, glimpse the future, and learn more about climate-smart precision agriculture and economically viable agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles.”

The site has the capacity to test fixed-wing, multi-rotor and rotary-wing systems for ten different crops, including corn, soybeans and milo. He explained: “This privately owned test site offers developers and manufacturers a unique opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of systems in a low-risk environment, while helping to bring products to market faster by collaborating with key parties in the value chain.

“Our goal is to become the epicenter for unmanned aerial systems in agriculture. We are looking to build relationships with those who want to leverage these assets and use a unique testing ground to advance the agricultural industry.”

“It’s hard to find pilots”

Cook said AgFunderNews: “We started in 1994 with two brothers and an airplane in northeast Kansas; today we cover states from Illinois to Louisiana. Over time, we moved into the agricultural retail business, selling inputs and fertilizers as well as some ground equipment.

“The (manned) aerial application industry has been on a steady upward trend for over 100 years, but spray drones have great potential, so we have been investigating how we can integrate them into our commercial operations.”

He added: “We worked with companies and OEMs of these spray drones and went looking for bigger, better, faster systems to see who was really pushing the envelope. We found several companies and as we started talking to them we learned more about their pain points but also saw a big gap. I saw a lot of work in air taxis, package delivery and air rescue, but fewer large agriculture-specific platforms.

“So I talked to some of these companies and said, ‘Not only are we an early adopter, but we’re trying to work with you on your early prototypes and get these things ready for your customers. How about we go deeper and work with the FAA to move this forward?’ And so we had good discussions with the FAA and were very fortunate to find our partner, the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, to set up this test area.

“Now we can work with these drone companies and OEMs to really test the systems in real-world environments.”

He added: “One big reason we do this is pilot safety. It’s hard to find pilots. Northeast Kansas is pretty hilly, we have a lot of trees and small fields, and the planes constantly get into pretty dangerous situations with power lines, trees and other obstacles. In those cases, it’s just better to use unmanned systems.”

Further reading:

Glimmer of hope for farmers using DJI spray drones after release of Senate version of defense budget bill

North Carolina farmer speaks out on fight over drone spraying in Chinese agriculture: “Everyone is contacting their congressman about it”

Battle over agricultural spraying drones heats up as US lawmakers target Chinese drone maker DJI: ‘This will be a job killer in rural America’