Drones set to transform and digitalise palm oil industry  

By Amiril Muttaqien Meketar

LANGKAWI, March 30 (Bernama) -- Using drones for cutting oil palm trees? Why not?

A local company has discovered another innovative idea to develop drones for agricultural purposes.

Kambyan Network Research Engineer, Yuvarajoo Subramaniam said its drones were designed to transform and digitalise the palm oil industry, to be exact.

Yuvarajoo pointed out that the company entered the fray after seeing local jobseekers, especially among the youths, did not fancy working in the agricultural sector.

“Not only that, but we also discovered that those working in the palm oil industry are receiving low pay despite doing harsh yet a dangerous job.

“This has led us to develop an idea to rejuvenate the sector that we believe will create more high skill jobs and get better pay,”  he told Bernama on the sidelines of the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace 2019 (LIMA’19) exhibition here, today.

Asked on how the drone works, Yuvarajoo explained that there would be multiple drones comprising sensor drone, harvesting drone, picker drone, and transporter drone to be deployed to the plantation area.

“Sensor drone will collect data on the plantation area, harvesting drone will cut the oil palm trees, picker drone will collect data and transporter drone will transfer up to 250kg of the crop to the factory,” he added.

What is more interesting, Yuvarajoo said the farmers can subsequently assess the process through an application called ‘Manusia’, an acronym derived from ‘Man Using Intelligence Application’, developed by the company.

Using the application, he said, the farmers can watch the process recorded by the drones including the footage from the top of the trees.

This will would provide them with the answer to dictate the trees’ health condition and whether the fruits ripen well or otherwise, he noted.

Yuvarajoo also said that the company had conducted field tests on the drones in Serian, Sarawak and in Kluang, Johor, last December whereby it has yielded a positive result and impressed the farmers there.

“We hope the drones will be ready by end of this year,” he said adding that the company had spent a year on the research and development of this project.

In the future, Yuvarajoo said the company would like to expand the usage of the drones to other sectors such as oil and gas, aerospace and manufacturing.

Meanwhile, a two-minutes demonstration of the oil palm tree cutting process, which was showcased inside a net-covered tent, captured the attention of the visitors at LIMA'19 which kicked off here on Tuesday.

A total of 406 companies, including 200 foreign firms, mostly involved in defence are taking part in LIMA’19, which is being held at the Mahsuri International Exhibition Centre (MIEC) and the Resorts World Langkawi (RWL) here.

-- BERNAMA