[MegaDeKay]

I live in a rural area and there are huge grain fields all around me. At least for these kind of crops, the field is seeded 100%. There are no gaps for the tractor wheels. Having said that, you rarely see tractors pulling a sprayer in the first place anymore. Most crops around here are sprayed by purpose built sprayers that have tons of ground clearance, have relatively narrow tires, very wide booms, and are comparatively very light vs. a massive tractor. They can be built so light because they aren't used to pull heavy implements behind them. All they carry is the chemical, the spray booms, and the operator. Later in the season, it would be tough to pick out the path these things took through the field if you could at all. As for costs, the spraying is often done on contract so the farmers don't buy the sprayers in the first place: they pay for the service plus the chemicals.

For this kind of application, I think drones have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any kind of traction with farmers in the area. Their capacity is too small, their runtime is too short, the area they can cover per unit time is too poor, etc.

[zdp7]

You are taking a very narrow view of what a drone is. The MQ-9A Reaper drone has an almost 2 ton payload capacity and flight endurance of 27 hours. I can totally envision a purpose built drone that could mount a crop dusters spray rig. It just most likely wouldn't be an electric quadcopter.

[MegaDeKay]

Seriously? That is a completely different animal from the drone portrayed in the article. Anything in that league wouldn't be anywhere near cost effective vs. something like a conventional crop sprayer plane.

[zdp7]

I am serious that I can envision a drone that could be used for crop dusting. I personally wouldn't use a quad copter, but probably something more like a 20-30 foot flying wing powered by a small gas engine. My example of a predator drone was to illustrate that it is entirely possible to design a UAV that greatly exceeds the specs needed for crop dusting. I also think most people here are vastly underestimating what a Agricultural UAV is capable of. Take a look at this page https://store.tmotor.com/product/P80-v3-pin-kv100-p-type.htm... and some of their possible configurations.

[SR2Z]

I think just adding a gas engine to a quadcopter would give it enough endurance to make it useful. Obviously a crop duster is going to be fairly large to start with - it needs some space just to store the things it will spray.