Autonomous drones serve a range of roles in Australia’s agricultural industry.
How We Serve Australia’s Agricultural Industry
Drones excel in agricultural applications that require working with large swathes of land. Unmanned drones exceed traditional farming methods by collecting and analysing vast swathes of real-time data and monitoring crops and livestock more swiftly and efficiently than human personnel can, allowing farmers to make informed decisions and operate with greater efficiency.
Key Services
Pest control and precision spraying
Our unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones tackle pest control and precision spraying efficiently and comprehensively. Sensorem’s recent projects have included Drone-in-a-Box technology deployed on grain storage sites to protect the stockpiles from birds and skeleton weed mapping to detect the presence of skeleton weed in the Wheatbelt of WA.
Crop health & monitoring
Our drones are also equipped with high-resolution, thermal cameras to monitor crop health. Thermal imagery can accurately assess whether any parts of the field are either too wet or require additional moisture. Our drones can also analyse plant colour to determine plant health, spot nutrient deficiencies or detect early signs of pests.
Autonomous oversight
Autonomous drone operations provide farmers with routine, repeatable oversight across large and remote properties. Using Drone-in-a-Box systems, scheduled flights can conduct regular water trough checks, feed level inspections and general livestock visibility without requiring daily travel across the property.
Flight paths are pre-programmed and data-driven, allowing drones to consistently monitor critical areas and provide visual confirmation of infrastructure and animal welfare. This reduces manual labour, improves response times and ensures continuous visibility across broadacre and remote operations.
Livestock management
Drones provide a highly efficient method of monitoring and managing livestock across large or remote properties. High-resolution zoom cameras enable operators to count and assess animals from a safe distance, while AI-assisted analytics can automate herd counting, movement tracking and anomaly detection across paddocks.
Thermal imaging adds another layer of insight, helping identify animals showing signs of illness, stress or injury by detecting abnormal heat patterns. Routine autonomous flights can also inspect fence lines, gates and boundary infrastructure, identifying breaks or damage early before stock escape or safety risks escalate.
By combining optical zoom, thermal sensing and AI-powered analysis, drones give farmers continuous visibility over livestock health and property integrity without the need for constant physical patrols.
Drone remote sensing and mapping
Drone remote sensing in agriculture uses a selection of onboard sensors to collect data from a distance. The application of remote sensing in agriculture means using RGB cameras, NDVI, multispectrial, thermal sensors and LiDAR amongst other technologies to capture different types of data. This data is then processed, using photogrammetry, to stitch together hundreds of thousands of aerial images to create detailed maps and 3D models of an area.
The benefits of remote sensing in agriculture and other industries are a vastly more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective way of mapping and surveying.
How Drones Improve Operations in the Agricultural Industry
Drones offer more accurate operations on a large scale, which makes them particularly suited to Australian agriculture, where the average beef farm is over 13,000 hectares. They offer precision farming, allowing farmers to make data-driven decisions for more efficient sustainable farming.
Cost Savings and Yield Improvement
The detailed data and information that drones can capture allows farmers targeted application of resources like water, fertilisers and pesticide, which reduces costs and leads to yield improvement (as well as being environmentally friendly).
Drones also reduce the need for tractors or crop-dusting planes, reducing costs further. Drone ability to detect poor crop health allows farmers to act decisively, increasing their yields and changing the way their farms operate.
Complete Reporting Insights
Drones are a powerful data-collection tool, providing comprehensive information for interpretation. Sensorem has the capabilities to process and analyse this information using specialised software in our remote operations centre to provide comprehensive, clear data and create actionable insights.
Safe and Compliant
By reducing the numbers of human personnel involved in a project, drones reduce the chance of accidents and increase safety.
Safety is of paramount importance at Sensorem. All of our drone pilots are CASA-accredited and extremely experienced in BVLOS operations.
Weather-Resistant Technology Operating 24/7
Sensorem utilises drones like the DJI Dock series which are engineered with ingress protection (IP) ratings to withstand harsh environmental conditions. This weather-resistant technology allows their autonomous drone systems to operate reliably in challenging Australian conditions, including extreme temperatures, dust, and rain.
Why Sensorem?
Sensorem is Australia’s leading drone technology service provider. Founded in 2013, Sensorem has completed over 7,000 detailed asset captures in both metropolitan and remote areas across Australia.
We employ cutting edge technology, using our in-house expertise to deliver a complete turn-key service, from initial fieldwork to final report delivery.
7000+
Asset inspections completed
724
3D digital twins constructed
50+
Drone flights per day across Australia
14
Full time remote drone pilots
7,378
Kilometres flown
140
Terabytes of data processed and analysed