Meet Dropcopter, a GENIUS NY 2.0 finalist
In early 2015, we completed our patent-pending prototype, and conducted the first-ever UAS pollination of orchard crops, boosting crop set by 10%. We sat down with the members of Genius NY for a Q & A.
Q/A With DropCopter
“In early 2015, we completed our patent pending prototype, and conducted the first ever UAS pollination of orchards crops, boosting crop set by 10%.”
Hometown: Corning, California
Team Size: 6 team members
Focus: Software/Hardware - Aerial Pollination for Agriculture
Website: http://dropcopter.com/
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Describe Your Team in a few Words:
Balanced, Aggressive
Tell us about your company:
Our mission is automated pollination of orchard crops via unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); farming efficiency, the promotion of new technologies, and healthy crop yield growth.
Every year flowers bloom on fruit tree crops and in order for them to grow fruit, you need a bee to pollinate every flower. The bee flies to one flower and picks up pollen, flies to the next flower, then that pollen gets rubbed off inside the second flower. The transfer of pollen from one tree to the next tree is what gives it the genetic material to grow an apple, pear or almond. So if there are not enough bees, there’s not enough fruit, which means a farmer can’t sell enough fruit to meet the market’s needs. So what we’re doing is basically supplementing the amount of lost bees by flying over those same flowers and dropping pollen using a drone.
What problem are you solving?
Currently bees are dying and it’s happening at a really unsustainable rate where we can’t seem to replace the ones that die with enough time to…