In 2014, a man from Cape Town, South Africa decided he wanted to find a way to better help local farmers yield larger crops.  As part of the 60% of Africans living in rural areas dependent on agriculture, James Paterson grew up on a fruit farm in Cape Town.  While on the farm he designed and built citrus trailers and a mechanism to clean the drip-line irrigation system.  While he was in his youth on the farm he developed a deep respect for the farmers, as well as a love for designing robotic systems. 

He went on to get a BS in Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automation Engineering from the University of Cape Town.  He graduated with distinction from the work he put into building both ground and aerial robots at UTC.  After graduating in 2011, he traveled to MIT in the United States to complete his MSC for Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical/Space Engineering.  He graduated in 2014 again with distinction.  The question became what to do with the amazing skills and knowledge he had acquired.

The answer came when he joined forces with Benji Meltzer who he met while at UTC and would spend the weekends building drones together for fun.  Benji has a similarly impressive educational background with a BS in Mechatronics Engineering from UTC, and a MSC in Neurotechnology from the Imperial College, London.  His main focus was on computational neuroscience and machine learning.  Together they decided to build a drone program to help the farmers from their home in Cape Town.  In 2014 James and Benji founded Aerobotics, a company that has now grown to just under 80 employees with around 200 clients world wide.

85% of those 200 clients are agriculturists from South Africa where the government has planned to invest $24 billion over the next decade to improve farming conditions.  As of now $35 billion is spent annually throughout African countries in the importation of produce, a number they hope to see decreased.  Aerobotics is set to do just that.  They have already seen a 10% increase in crop production with their clients.  And they do this by using a drone to better manage the current and future health of farms. 

According to their website, “Aerobotics provides an end-to-end solution to help manage your farm throughout the season.”  All a farmer needs to do is sign up to the app, called Aeroview, and schedule a drone pilot to come out to the farm or orchard.  The drone operator will come at least 3 times in one season to gather current data.  Then this data is uploaded to the app along with 3 years of stored satellite data.  The website goes on to say they will “Identify areas needing attention from our historical satellite health data, and inspect these in the field using our mobile app, Aeroview Scout.  Make data driven decisions on your farm, using our AI-based analytics platform. Our reporting tool consolidates all your in-field findings and alerts you to areas where action is needed.”

There are many companies that are providing farmers assistance with drones.  The drones are being use to identify problems like hydration levels and pest issues.  The drones are able to accomplish these task in a fraction of the time it would have previously taken, saving farmers a lot of time and money.  The difference with Aerobotics is that they don’t rely only on the images and data collected from the drones in real time.  They compare this data to the history of the farm and use machine learning to predict a better plan of sustainability.

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