* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Friday, October 10, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    MSG Entertainment Takes Radio City Music Hall Into the Future With Introduction of Sphere Immersive Sound – Business Wire

    MSG Entertainment Transforms Radio City Music Hall with Cutting-Edge Sphere Immersive Sound Experience

    Israel’s Entertainment Industry Is Being Targeted by the Left in Hollywood and the Right at Home – The Wall Street Journal

    Inside the Fierce Clash Shaping Israel’s Entertainment Industry: Hollywood vs. Local Voices

    Offset Is Ready To Finalize Divorce With Cardi B for a Major Reason – Yahoo

    Offset Poised to Finalize Divorce from Cardi B for a Major Reason

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education – Livability.com

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Transforming Entertainment and Education

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    China outlines more controls on exports of rare earths and technology – fox40.com

    China Unveils Tougher Restrictions on Rare Earth and Technology Exports

    Wisconsin Dairy Leads the Way with Cutting-Edge Technology Systems

    ENERCON and Biome collaborate for wind turbine noise reduction technology – Yahoo Finance

    ENERCON and Biome Join Forces to Revolutionize Wind Turbine Noise Reduction

    US and investors gambling on unproven nuclear technology, warn experts – Financial Times

    US and investors gambling on unproven nuclear technology, warn experts – Financial Times

    Is Light-Speed Analog Computing the Future of Technology? – BIOENGINEER.ORG

    Could Light-Speed Analog Computing Transform the Future of Technology?

    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    MSG Entertainment Takes Radio City Music Hall Into the Future With Introduction of Sphere Immersive Sound – Business Wire

    MSG Entertainment Transforms Radio City Music Hall with Cutting-Edge Sphere Immersive Sound Experience

    Israel’s Entertainment Industry Is Being Targeted by the Left in Hollywood and the Right at Home – The Wall Street Journal

    Inside the Fierce Clash Shaping Israel’s Entertainment Industry: Hollywood vs. Local Voices

    Offset Is Ready To Finalize Divorce With Cardi B for a Major Reason – Yahoo

    Offset Poised to Finalize Divorce from Cardi B for a Major Reason

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Driving Entertainment and Education – Livability.com

    Beyond the Stage: 8 Performing Arts Centers Transforming Entertainment and Education

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Row K Entertainment Emerges as Major New Hollywood Buyer With Splashy TIFF Shopping Spree – TheWrap

    Charlie Hunnam Reflects on Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story – Yahoo

    Charlie Hunnam Reveals the Dark Challenges of Playing a Serial Killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    China outlines more controls on exports of rare earths and technology – fox40.com

    China Unveils Tougher Restrictions on Rare Earth and Technology Exports

    Wisconsin Dairy Leads the Way with Cutting-Edge Technology Systems

    ENERCON and Biome collaborate for wind turbine noise reduction technology – Yahoo Finance

    ENERCON and Biome Join Forces to Revolutionize Wind Turbine Noise Reduction

    US and investors gambling on unproven nuclear technology, warn experts – Financial Times

    US and investors gambling on unproven nuclear technology, warn experts – Financial Times

    Is Light-Speed Analog Computing the Future of Technology? – BIOENGINEER.ORG

    Could Light-Speed Analog Computing Transform the Future of Technology?

    ARM Institute opens technology project call to speed submarine manufacturing – The Robot Report

    ARM Institute Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology Project to Revolutionize Submarine Manufacturing

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Move Over, Tractor—the Farmer Wants a Crop-Spraying Drone

May 23, 2024
in Science
Move Over, Tractor—the Farmer Wants a Crop-Spraying Drone
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Arthur Erickson discovered drones during his first year at college studying aerospace engineering. He immediately thought the sky was the limit for how the machines could be used, but it took years of hard work and some nimble decisions to turn that enthusiasm into a successful startup.

Today, Erickson is the CEO of Houston-based Hylio, a company that builds crop-spraying drones for farmers. Launched in 2015, the company has its own factory and employs more than 40 people.

Arthur Erickson

Occupation:

Aerospace engineer and founder, Hylio

Location:

Houston

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in aerospace, specializing in aeronautics, from the University of Texas at Austin

Erickson founded Hylio with classmates while they were attending the University of Texas at Austin. They were eager to quit college and launch their business, which he admits was a little presumptuous.

“We were like, ‘Screw all the school stuff—drones are the future,’” Erickson says. “I already thought I had all the requisite technical skills and had learned enough after six months of school, which obviously was arrogant.”

His parents convinced him to finish college, but Erickson and the other cofounders spent all their spare time building a multipurpose drone from off-the-shelf components and parts they made using their university’s 3D printers and laser cutters.

By the time he graduated in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace, specializing in aeronautics, the group’s prototype was complete, and they began hunting for customers. The next three years were a wild ride of testing their drones in Costa Rica and other countries across Central America.

A grocery delivery service

A promotional video about the company that Erickson posted on Instagram led to the first customer, the now-defunct Costa Rican food and grocery delivery startup GoPato. The company wanted to use the drones to make deliveries in the capital, San José, but rather than purchase the machines, GoPato offered to pay for the founders’ meals and lodging and give them a percentage of delivery fees collected.

For the next nine months, Hylio’s team spent their days sending their drones on deliveries and their nights troubleshooting problems in a makeshift workshop in their shared living room.

“We had a lot of sleepless nights,” Erickson says. “It was a trial by fire, and we learned a lot.”

One lesson was the need to build in redundant pieces of key hardware, particularly the GPS unit. “When you have a drone crash in the middle of a Costa Rican suburb, the importance of redundancy really hits home,” Erickson says.

“Drones are great for just learning, iterating, crashing things, and then rebuilding them.”

The small cut of delivery fees Hylio received wasn’t covering costs, Erickson says, so eventually the founders parted ways with GoPato. Meanwhile, they had been looking for new business opportunities in Costa Rica. They learned from local farmers that the terrain was too rugged for tractors, so most sprayed crops by hand. This was both grueling and hazardous because it brought the farmers into close proximity to the pesticides.

The Hylio team realized its drones could do this type of work faster and more safely. They designed a spray system and made some software tweaks, and by 2018 the company began offering crop-spraying services, Erickson says. The company expanded its business to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, starting with just a pair of drones but eventually operating three spraying teams of four drones each.

The work was tough, Erickson says, but the experience helped the team refine their technology, working out which sensors operated best in the alternately dusty and moist conditions found on farms. Even more important, by the end of 2019 they were finally turning a profit.

Drones are cheaper than tractors

In hindsight, agriculture was an obvious market, Erickson says, even in the United States, where spraying with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers is typically done using large tractors. These tractors can cost up to half a million dollars to purchase and about US $7 a hectare to operate.

A pair of Hylio’s drones cost a fifth of that, Erickson says, and operating them costs about a quarter of the price. The company’s drones also fly autonomously; an operator simply marks GPS waypoints on a map to program the drone where to spray and then sits back and lets it do the job. In this way, one person can oversee multiple drones working at once, covering more fields than a single tractor could.

A dark haired beard man in glasses reaches down to a large white drone that is as tall as his mid-thighs and has multiple rotors.Arthur Erickson inspects the company’s largest spray drone, the AG-272. It can cover thousands of hectares per day.Hylio

Convincing farmers to use drones instead of tractors was tough, Erickson says. Farmers tend to be conservative and are wary of technology companies that promise too much.

“Farmers are used to people coming around every few years with some newfangled idea, like a laser that’s going to kill all their weeds or some miracle chemical,” he says.

In 2020, Hylio opened a factory in Houston and started selling drones to American farmers. The first time Hylio exhibited its machines at an agricultural trade show, Erickson says, a customer purchased one on the spot.

“It was pretty exciting,” he says. “It was a really good feeling to find out that our product was polished enough, and the pitch was attractive enough, to immediately get customers.”

Today, selling farmers on the benefits of drones is a big part of Erickson’s job. But he’s still involved in product development, and his daily meetings with the sales team have become an invaluable source of customer feedback. “They inform a lot of the features that we add to the products,” he says.

He’s currently leading development of a new type of drone—a scout—designed to quickly inspect fields for pest infestations or poor growth or to assess crop yields. But these days his job is more about managing his team of engineers than about doing hands-on engineering himself. “I’m more of a translator between the engineers and the market needs,” he says.

Focus on users’ needs

Erickson advises other founders of startups not to get too caught up in the excitement of building cutting-edge technology, because you can lose sight of what the user actually needs.

“I’ve become a big proponent of not trying to outsmart the customers,” he says. “They tell us what their pain points are and what they want to see in the product. Don’t overengineer it. Always check with the end users that what you’re building is going to be useful.”

Working with drones forces you to become a generalist, Erickson says. You need a basic understanding of structural mechanics and aerodynamics to build something airworthy. But you also need to be comfortable working with sensors, communications systems, and power electronics, not to mention the software used to control and navigate the vehicles.

Erickson advises students who want to get into the field to take courses in mechatronics, which provide a good blend of mechanical and electrical engineering. Deep knowledge of the individual parts is generally not as important as understanding how to fit all the pieces together to create a system that works well as a whole.

And if you’re a tinkerer like he is, Erickson says, there are few better ways to hone your engineering skills than building a drone. “It’s a cheap, fast way to get something up in the air,” he says. “They’re great for just learning, iterating, crashing things, and then rebuilding them.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : IEEE – https://spectrum.ieee.org/arthur-erickson-drones-profile

Tags: farmerscienceTractor—the
Previous Post

Will AI Controlled Hypersonic Fighters Beat Sixth Generation Stealth?

Next Post

Pope Francis Accused of Heresy after Claiming Humanity Is ‘Fundamentally Good’

Climate Change Poses ‘Ecological Trap’ for Species Struggling to Adapt – Bioengineer.org

Climate Change Creates a Dangerous Ecological Trap for Struggling Species

October 10, 2025
Science and the heart: Remembering Jane Goodall – American Animal Hospital Association – AAHA

Unlocking the Heart’s Secrets: Celebrating Jane Goodall’s Enduring Legacy

October 10, 2025
Young trucker couple embraces flatbed trucking, balanced lifestyle – Truck News

Young trucker couple embraces flatbed trucking, balanced lifestyle – Truck News

October 10, 2025
China outlines more controls on exports of rare earths and technology – fox40.com

China Unveils Tougher Restrictions on Rare Earth and Technology Exports

October 10, 2025
Midway’s Tate Mason named Week 7 WVLT Sports/5Star Preps Player of the Week – WVLT

Midway’s Tate Mason named Week 7 WVLT Sports/5Star Preps Player of the Week – WVLT

October 9, 2025
FIGO World Congress 2025 closes in Cape Town with renewed global commitment – FIGO.org

Global Leaders Unite in Cape Town to Close FIGO World Congress 2025 with Renewed Commitment

October 9, 2025
Our economic future is a black box – marketplace.org

Our economic future is a black box – marketplace.org

October 9, 2025
MSG Entertainment Takes Radio City Music Hall Into the Future With Introduction of Sphere Immersive Sound – Business Wire

MSG Entertainment Transforms Radio City Music Hall with Cutting-Edge Sphere Immersive Sound Experience

October 9, 2025
See photos from Pitt’s Health Sciences Alumni Weekend – University of Pittsburgh

See photos from Pitt’s Health Sciences Alumni Weekend – University of Pittsburgh

October 9, 2025
U.S. politics is broken because of MAGA Republicans and hard-line Democrats – AJC.com

How MAGA Republicans and Hard-Line Democrats Are Driving U.S. Politics to the Brink

October 9, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (860)
  • Economy (880)
  • Entertainment (21,753)
  • General (17,506)
  • Health (9,922)
  • Lifestyle (893)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (881)
  • Politics (890)
  • Science (16,091)
  • Sports (21,381)
  • Technology (15,861)
  • World (863)

Recent News

Climate Change Poses ‘Ecological Trap’ for Species Struggling to Adapt – Bioengineer.org

Climate Change Creates a Dangerous Ecological Trap for Struggling Species

October 10, 2025
Science and the heart: Remembering Jane Goodall – American Animal Hospital Association – AAHA

Unlocking the Heart’s Secrets: Celebrating Jane Goodall’s Enduring Legacy

October 10, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version