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Evaluation Of Current Policies on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Indian Agriculture


Affiliations
1 Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, United States
2 Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Australia
3 Department of Agronomy, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar 125 004, Australia
 

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called ‘drones’, have enormous potential for technological advances in many sectors including agriculture. The recent revision in UAV policy by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India, can impact the pace of research and development in machine vision capabilities in the country. Several other countries that have framed UAV policy previously, are continuously bringing changes to the existing framework to make it more user friendly. India can learn from those changes and bring out a comprehensive update to foster a broader application of these tools in agriculture. This policy review provides suggestions and solutions for increasing licensing centres, limiting UAV speed and weight for safer flights and including aerial pesticide applications in UAV permits to revolutionize the multibillion-dollar agriculture industry. This article has also examines the current UAV regulations in four other countries.

Keywords

DGCA, Drone Policy, Precision Agriculture, Remote Sensing, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
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  • Evaluation Of Current Policies on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Indian Agriculture

Abstract Views: 259  |  PDF Views: 78

Authors

Vijay Singh
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, United States
Muthukumar Bagavathiannan
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, United States
Bhagirath Singh Chauhan
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Australia
Samar Singh
Department of Agronomy, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar 125 004, Australia

Abstract


Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called ‘drones’, have enormous potential for technological advances in many sectors including agriculture. The recent revision in UAV policy by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India, can impact the pace of research and development in machine vision capabilities in the country. Several other countries that have framed UAV policy previously, are continuously bringing changes to the existing framework to make it more user friendly. India can learn from those changes and bring out a comprehensive update to foster a broader application of these tools in agriculture. This policy review provides suggestions and solutions for increasing licensing centres, limiting UAV speed and weight for safer flights and including aerial pesticide applications in UAV permits to revolutionize the multibillion-dollar agriculture industry. This article has also examines the current UAV regulations in four other countries.

Keywords


DGCA, Drone Policy, Precision Agriculture, Remote Sensing, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv117%2Fi1%2F25-29