Agricultural News
Noble Foundation CEO Sees Bright Future for Agricultural Drones
Fri, 13 Dec 2013 15:27:48 CST
Each passing day seems to bring potential new uses for unmanned aerial vehicles. Oklahoma is at the forefront of the development of those technologies and researchers at Ardmore's Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation hope to be at the forefront of using UAVs to advance precision agriculture.
Bill Buckner is the president and CEO of the Noble Foundation. He spoke recently at the 2013 Oklahoma Unmanned Aerial Systems Agriculture Summit in Midwest City. In an interview after his presentation, he told Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays that the foundation's namesake, if he were alive today, would have been very supportive of this new technology.
"Mr. Noble was very technologically advanced for the time. This was the turn of the century and he always felt like technology was going to put him out in front of his competitors. He could drill faster and tap into more oil. He was going to do a much better job. And he believed the same thing about agriculture and just technologies in general. So, if he was alive today he would be challenging us to do more from a technological standpoint to advance agriculture."
The Noble Foundation has already done a great deal to advance precision agriculture for both farmers and ranchers. The unmanned aerial vehicle concept opens up new frontiers in that endeavor, Buckner said.
"It's really a tool added to the bag of tricks that we have at our disposal today- UAVs are going to be able to collect data from the air, obviously, and robotics on the ground using either ground sensors, air sensors, pest sensors, or things of this nature, so they can perform a myriad of different functions for us. So this is really going to challenge the Noble Foundation to get out in front of the technology curve and to be able to bring more understanding to how these are going to be more applicable in the ag setting."
Buckner said the Noble Foundation is uniquely positioned to help advance not only UAV technology, but other technologies as well. Their consulting services are provided free of charge to producers and those producers form a cooperative partnership that allows Noble researchers a vast range of opportunities to conduct experimentation and technological development. That partnership will be ideal, he said, in the rapid advancement of new technologies and in helping bring economic development through technology to the ag industry.
Click on the LISTEN BAR below to listen to the full interview.
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