Over the weekend, Kelly Hills Unmanned, a company that says it is dedicated to accelerating multimodal technologies in agriculture and autonomy, announced the launch of The Forge.
It’s being described as a deployment-centered program designed to meld best-in-class ag technologies into new tools that farmers, ranchers and service providers can trust and use for decades to come, according to a press release from the group.
The Forge’s inaugural cohort hopes to bring together a “powerhouse group” of innovators and operators from across the ag technology landscape into a coordinated, systems approach to help growers identify and overcome agronomic issues before they become yield robbers.
The cohort members, or pillars, are:
- Precision AI: Developers of real-time drone-based precision spraying systems that reduce chemical inputs and deliver hyper-targeted agronomic action.
- Pyka: Builders of autonomous electric aircraft designed for aerial applications, logistics and mission-critical crop operations.
- ScanIt Technologies: Experts in using early detection of airborne pathogens to maximize yields and minimize costs.
- Heinen Brothers Agra Services: One of the nation’s largest aerial applicators and ag services companies, offering deployment scale and deep field expertise.
- Yamaha Precision Agriculture: Pioneers of robotic and aerial technology for small scale, high-efficiency farming.
- Drop Flight: Providers of droplet characterization and aircraft calibration tools to optimize spray accuracy and compliance in real-world operations.
- Taranis: Global leaders in ultra-high-resolution aerial scouting, delivering precise field-level insights to boost agronomic decision-making.
For more information, head to www.kellyhills.us/the-forge.
Farm Journal reached out to Lukas Koch to pick his brain about this new, novel entrant to the ag tech ecosystem. We first met Koch last year during the Kelly Hills Unmanned summer field day near Seneca, Kan., where his group unveiled the Pyka Pelican Spray drone — at the time the largest, highest-capacity ag spray drone on the market (280-liter capacity). This year Kelly Hills is integrating the Pelican 2 (300-liter capacity, up to 222 acres per hour at 60-foot swath rate) into its aerial application arsenal.
Farm Journal: Would you call this an ag tech incubator or accelerator type of program, and if not, what’s makes The Forge different?
Lukas Koch (LK): “(The Forge) is neither of those, because we’re not taking a cash influx to create an R&D program. What we’re doing is creating new tools with existing technology — if they’re part of plug and play that’s fine, but we don’t care about that. We want to know if the tech has merit and does it fit on the acre, but maybe something with it is not fully there just yet? So, what are we supposed to do with it then? You have a technology and, for example, it can take high-res pictures and identify areas of your fields that need attention, but today the most likely options are using a ground rig or hiring an airplane to manage that in a meaningful way. For that example, we think there’s an opportunity to do that with a small spray drone, but then again the logistics are tough; you have to come back and land and swap out a battery or refill the tank so often. We’re going to take a bunch of existing technologies that already exist, ask them to change nothing and put them to the test — and we’ll push the bounds of what they can do, to make these all work together in a system.”
FJ: How will this all kind of come together and take shape this summer as the program rolls out?
LK: “We have a few drone companies (in the cohort), and there’s a droplet analysis program involved — I thought that was an important piece in analyzing the spray coverage we get. Right now, we have the in-field sensors out in the field to help us ground truth the data we get from overhead. And then the remote sensing piece gives us situational awareness; it tells us where we should be focusing our efforts. And overall, I think, OK, that’s great, but now you still have to make a treatment with either a ground rig or hire an airplane.
“But with our FAA test range (pictured above) that we were approved for last summer within Kelly Hills, now we can autonomously fly to those spots with a drone, either in line of sight or Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), and we can make those treatments autonomously. This year, the tool we’re focusing on is true spot spraying BVLOS in corn and soybeans, and then next year hopefully we can make more tools or take that technology that already exists and make it into a tool for a grower, who can sign up for this subscription and buy one of these drones, and now I have a full encompassing suite of tools and I can know for sure what works and what does not work.”
FJ: How can farmers in Kansas learn more and possibly sign up to work with you guys?
LK: “There’s really two ways right now. For anything specific they might want to do, maybe there are some projects they are thinking about, go ahead and ping us on the website, and we’ll get back to you. And the other way is, once we’re done with a set tool or we wrap up our summer series of projects, we plan to make the results and findings available online, kind of like Beck’s Hybrids does with its farm applied research studies. We want people to see what we’re doing and to reach out with their ideas on how we can make better tools inside of The Forge and showcase some of these technologies together in one new product, and growers are very interested in this and would love to understand if they can package these technologies together and make an ROI.”
FJ: You already have this inaugural cohort in place, but are you already thinking about what’s next?
LK: “I have a couple companies that I need to further engage with now that they can see what The Forge is all about. A couple of those are involved in year-over-year (data) modeling technology that can say, OK, help me start to determine this is my pattern, and this is what I did last year; now can you tell me what to do next year and how to create more ROI? And then I think soil is a huge key right now, too. I don’t have any any soil type products in there, and soil sampling is great, but there are some neat companies that are focusing on soil-sensing technology that I think would be interesting to package in there, too. You know, in due time I think we’ll get there.”
Koch says the plan is to unveil many of the insights and results from The Forge at this summer’s Kelly Hills Unmanned Field Day. That event is set for Aug. 19, and you can get registered for it here.
And, just for fun, here’s a video breakdown of the Pyka Pelican 2:
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