Photo by Tom Campbell Curtis Ross' backyard in Remington, Ind., doubles as research lab. Throughout the growing season, co-workers deliver corn plants to Ross, who lays them out in his yard for side-by-side analysis of different hybrids.

There were several condor sightings in the skies over central Indiana this summer.

This feather-free, orange and white condor has a 10-foot wingspan, weighs 18 pounds and cruises at an air speed of 30 miles an hour.

But don’t bother calling the Audubon Society. The “Crop Condor,” as owner Curtis Ross, BS ’80, calls it, is a UAV (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle).

In test flights last summer at the Purdue University Agronomy Center for Research and Education, the “Crop Condor” flew flawlessly, drifting a thousand feet above the ground, circling at the push of a button by the operator on the ground who had the remote control.

It is the landings that may require a little tweaking.

Once the Condor has completed its aerial tasks of collecting data and photographing the crops below, the operator shuts off the plane’s electric motor. The Condor loses altitude and speed, gliding earthward in a series of ever-shrinking circles until the sky gives way to the ground and the Condor makes a crash landing in a beanfield.

“We still have a few bugs to work out on the landings,” says Ross, vice president of CAL MAR Soil Testing Labs in Remington, Ind. The landing looks worse than it actually is. The plane lands lightly enough in the soybeans that it does not significantly damage either the plane or the crop.

“It’s just easier to have it land in a field, rather than try to have it land on some sort of runway,” Ross says.

This spring, Ross hopes to use the Crop Condor in soil mapping, as well as weed, pest and yield monitoring.

Ross uses the photographs to assess yield potential of fields throughout the growing season. He can combine the color and infrared photos into a composite map that helps the farmer plan variable-rate applications of fertilizer in future growing seasons, so each area of the field gets only the exact amount it needs. The photos can also locate clogged underground drainage tile lines, monitor pest infestation, isolate poor-yielding areas, or map out property lines.

Ross developed the Condor with John Sullivan, a professor in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of Purdue’s Center for Advanced Manufacturing, and Mike Leasure, an associate professor in the Department of Aviation Technology.

“It’s nice to be so close to the university,” Ross says. “Being only 30 minutes away, I can just jump in my car and drive down and talk to somebody whenever a problem develops.”

Ross also worked closely with professor Gaines (Buddy) Miles, PhD ’75, in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and with the Department of Agronomy to help him figure out how to make sense of the data the Condor collects.

He even hired John Brost, BS ’99, MS ’01, (agricultural and biological engineering) for his expertise in precision agriculture and remote sensing.

Ross is the son of Merrill A. Ross (professor emeritus of botany and plant pathology) and the stepson of Carole A. Lembi (professor of botany and plant pathology). They helped start CAL MAR in 1990, and their initials provided the company with its unique name.

The Condor flies at an altitude between 700 and 1,000 feet, using two cameras (one using traditional, digital photography, the other, multi-spectral) to photograph clients’ farm fields.

From an elevation of 1,000 feet, the Condor can photograph an area of about 40 acres with each remotely controlled click of the shutter.

The Condor is powered by an electric motor, rather than traditional gasoline-power, to reduce vibration and improve the quality of the photographs. State-of-the-art batteries with improved power-to-weight ratio allow the Condor to stay aloft for approximately one hour, collecting data at a cruising speed of 25 to 30 miles per hour.

Aerial photography has been a tool in the agriculture arsenal for as long as there have

been airplanes and photographers

to fly in them. High-quality digital imaging, too, has been around so long it is no longer looked at as a novelty item.

Satellite imagery is also available, as long as you have deep pockets and don’t particularly care when the satellite takes the pictures. It’s fine for most agricultural work. But if a client is trying to find tile lines buried in a field, or establish accurate property lines, the Condor’s photographs, used with a GPS locating system, can find a point on the ground with only a 6-inch margin of error.

In other words, a satellite may be able to spot a dog roaming through a field, but data from the Condor could identify the breed of the dog.

But what makes the Crop Condor unique is not only its size, but also its ability to fly and take photographs at a moment’s notice and to report the results nearly as fast.

“In the past, our success rate with aerial photography had only been about 50 percent,” Ross laments. “After a saturating rain, we only have so much time to get a plane and shoot pictures to show us where tile lines are located in a field. Usually, the window of opportunity is only a day or two. If a plane isn’t available, then we lose the opportunity.”

That is only part of the problem.

“Even when we could get an airplane up with a camera, we couldn’t always get the pictures back when we wanted,” Ross adds.

Securing a satellite is an alternative. But buying time on a satellite is time-consuming, not to mention expensive. Agricultural imagery is not exactly a first priority with companies that own satellites.

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