Sony Corporation, which already offers a drone-enabled smart agriculture solution to support crop management, has now unveiled the Airpeak aircraft at this week’s CES2021, as part of its own drone development project in the area of AI robotics.
The first phase of this project will see Sony launch a new business targeted towards professional photography and video production in the spring of 2021. In order to fully support the creativity of video creators, the payload of the Airpeak drone can be equipped with an Alpha™ mirrorless camera to capture high-quality, full-frame aerial photography and video.
Capable of dynamic filming and precise, stable flight, Airpeak, the industry’s smallest class of drone that can be equipped with the Alpha system, could also ideal for agtech applications. Sony is keen to secure feedback from a wide range of professional drone users and is currently seeking collaborators in the United States and Japan to participate in its Airpeak project.
Sony’s smart agriculture division currently offers what it describes as ‘seamless offline drone field surveys’, which use a combined multispectral camera and GNSS sensor unit to survey large areas of land and collect data, before rapidly generating a combined NDVI and RGB map in the field – without the need for an internet connection. Could the Airpeak be the next step in enhancing its crop management capabilities, enabling the company to offer the complete package instead of relying on drones from other manufacturers?
