Nano-drones

Nano-drones have the potential to bring improvements to the food system. While drones have been used in agriculture for some time (e.g. precision agriculture), nano-drones have been used to a lesser degree. As technology improves (e.g. sensors become smaller, flight precision improves and cloud-based image processing improves), nano-drones will likely be increasingly used in the food system. Applications include their use in production and breeding, and along the value chain. An example is pest and disease detection and treatment of agricultural crops and livestock. For crop production, an advantage of nano-drones over larger drones is that they can directly quantify crop traits using methods (e.g., object‐oriented classification) that require less image calibration and interpretation than the currently used spectral approaches.