Maintaining a solar farm spanning acres can require a fleet of personnel to remove weeds and clean the panels. Hylio has created a drone that can help automate the maintenance of solar panels.
The Hylio AG-210 is a small and agile drone produced by the Texas-based company. All Hylio UAS, including the AG-210, are FAA authorized and NDAA compliant, meaning they meet regulatory requirements to fly safely within residential and mixed-use areas, as well as government properties. The lightweight and compact design of the drone makes it easy to set up and operate by one person, without sacrificing its capabilities. The AG-210 has a 2.6 gallon tank and can deploy a swath of product up to 20 feet wide, or it can spot with RTK GPS position to within inches. The AG-210 can treat up to 15 acres per hour at a rate of 1 gallon per acre, and even greater coverage can be achieved by using multiple drones simultaneously with Hylio’s proprietary swarm control software.
“We developed the AG-210 specifically to provide highly precise treatments in areas where you want to avoid a negative impact on the environment, such as solar panels on agricultural land where crops are grown. With the AG-210, maintenance crews no longer have to apply herbicides with a backpack sprayer, walk on foot to cover acres of fields or drive equipment through fields to spray,” said Arthur Erickson, co-founder and CEO of Hylio. “The AG-210 will make the management of solar parks more efficient. It can also be used to clean panels and remove dust and other debris.”
The AG-210 Enterprise Kit includes the fully autonomous four-rotor UAS platform equipped with a high-precision spray system consisting of a 2.6-gallon tank, TeeJet nozzles and electronic flow meters. The AG-210 is equipped with two wide-angle radars so it can detect and avoid obstacles in real time, a built-in HD camera and redundant GPS units.
The AG-210 can be flown in both autonomous and manual flight control modes. And up to three UAS can be controlled from one ground station while performing fully automated operations. Each Hylio drone also comes with a Hylio GroundLink Controller, an all-in-one tablet/RC controller solution developed by Hylio that allows the operator to seamlessly switch between autonomous and manual control. To fly in autonomous mode, operators simply need to define an area to be treated, enter how much product to apply, press “Take Off” and the drone will do the work. While the Hylio drone is in the field applying material, a series of sensors provide real-time access to data such as GPS position, flow rate, altitude and more. All flight and handling data is stored in the operator’s account and provides access to historical application maps, maintenance data and more via the Hylio interface.
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