Agricultural Drone Unveiled by Defense Contractor Tesseract

Defense contractor and robotics firm Tesseract Ventures has retooled its military drone for the American farm.

The Tesseract Ag Drone uses computer vision and optics to provide farmers with detailed, real-time information about their crops. The drone can help farmers track crop development, identify pests, monitor weed growth, observe weather impacts and assess crop and soil health, the Overland Park, Kansas-based company said.

When paired with the Tesseract Synthesis Software, operators can use the drone’s data to provide recommendations that improve a farm’s efficiency, yield and sustainability.

Earlier this year, Tesseract was awarded a contract by the U.S. Special Operations Command for its latest drone, the Special Warfighter Assistive Robotic Machine (SWARM). This nano first-person-view drone can work alone or in groups and can deliver payloads, including explosive charges against enemy troops, during operations.

“Our commitment to agricultural innovation is both military-proven and farmer-led, offering enhanced capabilities and strategic benefits to our national farmers and co-op partners," CEO John Boucard said in a release.

The AG Drone is not Tesseract’s first foray into agriculture. It builds on what Boucard called the Tesseract Solution, “a holistic suite of interconnected technologies designed to coalesce into one seamless common operating picture.” The suite, in turn, has four elements, or “pillars,” according to Boucard.

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The first pillar uses Tesseract’s PRISM Agriculture Edge Sensors, which can collect a variety of metrics, from the agricultural, like a crop’s nutritional deficiencies and pest threats, to the mechanical, like motor and pump health. Tesseract has also sold PRISM to the construction industry as a worksite-security solution.

In the agriculture suite, the data collected by the PRISM sensors — and now the AG Drones — is run through the second pillar, Tesseract’s MOSAIC Platform, which analyzes the information with machine-learning algorithms to recognize “complex patterns and correlations that might go unnoticed otherwise.” The platform uses predictive analytics to identify possible threats to a crop, such as pest infestations or nutrient shortfalls in the soil.

These analyses are then fed into the third pillar, the Tesseract ECHO Digital Twin Environment, a simulation program in which the major elements of the farm — soil, weather, crops and equipment — are replicated in a risk-free sandbox in which the farmer can game out possible scenarios.

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The fourth pillar in the suite is the MOSAIC Connect application programming interface (API), which can “synchronize data in real-time between PRISM’s cutting-edge sensors, the analytical prowess of the MOSAIC Platform and the virtual testing grounds of the Tesseract ECHO,” Boucard explained. The API is designed to be updated for new technologies and farming methods and is compatible with third-party systems, Tesseract added.

"With the Ag Drone and Synthesis Integration, Tesseract Ventures is not just launching a new American-made drone product, we are ushering in a new era of precision agriculture," Boucard said. "This technology is a game-changer for U.S. farmers, providing technological advantages previously unavailable on a single platform.”