XAG Deploys P100 Agriculture Drone to Vietnam
July 5, 2022
China’s XAG, which develops agricultural robots and drones, has officially launched its large-capacity agricultural drone P100 in Vietnam to help support farmers to transform into more productive and sustainable farming modes.
The multifunction P100 can autonomously implement precision spraying, fertilizing, and sowing across multiple crops, including rice and fruit trees. The company said its use around the farm is expected to boost yields while cutting chemical and water use, reducing the stress and fatigue of small farming operations coping with a huge spike in fertilizer costs.
The P100 is crafted in a modular, detachable structure that can fully separate the flying platform from task systems. XAG said this results in the drone being able to flexibly switch between the spraying and spreading modules. The handling weight is also reduced on the drone, to make transportation and maintenance easier for operators. Compared to previous visions, the P100 has increased its payload to 40 kg, enabling higher efficiency in serving larger fields. The drone’s spraying system, XAG RevoSpray 2, can carry 40 liters of liquid and spray up to 10 meters wide to protect crops against present and emerging pests.
The drone also combines new peristaltic pumps and nozzle shutoff valves with mature rotary atomization technology, which allows high-precision spraying of atomized droplets between 60 to 400 microns. The flow rate and droplet size can be accurately controlled on the app, so the drone can evenly deliver chemicals to better cover the crops while reducing the amount of pesticides, XAG said. A shutoff valve inside the nozzles prevents chemical leakage during turning and transport of the drone.
The XAG RevoCast 2 is the broadcast system of the P100, and has been redesigned with vertical centrifugal spreading discs and a smart screw feeder, which can adapt to various types of fertilizers, as well as being more resistant to winds to avoid seed drifting. With a flight speed of up to 13.8 meters per second, one battery pack is sufficient to spread 280 kg of fertilizer, the company added.
Instead of rice transplanting, farmers can use the drone for direct rice seeding, which eases the burden on Vietnamese farmers, XAG said. When mounted on a 60-liter granular container, the drone can disperse rice seeds evenly through rice paddies to achieve the ideal plant density to help elevate rice yields.
XAG said it has organized demonstration tours to scale up deployments across the Mekong River Delta. In May 150 students from the Can Tho University, who major in agricultural economics, were given a demonstration of the P100. On an 8-hectare durian garden, the autonomous drone demonstrated its spraying. XAG said agriculture is key to Vietnam’s economic development, contributing as the world’s second largest rice exporter. XAG said about 70% of the country’s agricultural products come from more than 22 million small farms.
For more details on the P100, visit the XAG website here.
