Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Smart Agriculture: Applications, Requirements, and Challenges

In the next few years, smart farming will reach each and every nook of the world. The prospects of using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for smart farming are immense. However, the cost and the ease in controlling UAVs for smart farming might play an important role for motivating farmers to use UAVs in farming. Mostly, UAVs are controlled by remote controllers using radio waves. There are several technologies such as Wi-Fi or ZigBee that are also used for controlling UAVs. However, Smart Bluetooth (also referred to as Bluetooth Low Energy) is a wireless technology used to transfer data over short distances. Smart Bluetooth is cheaper than other technologies and has the advantage of being available on every smart phone. Farmers can use any smart phone to operate their respective UAVs along with Bluetooth Smart enabled agricultural sensors in the future. However, certain requirements and challenges need to be addressed before UAVs can be operated for smart agriculture-related applications. Hence, in this article, an attempt has been made to explore the types of sensors suitable for smart farming, potential requirements and challenges for operating UAVs in smart agriculture. We have also identified the future applications of using UAVs in smart farming.