Guangzhou-based drone maker XAIRCRAFT unveiled a new UAV in Beijing on Monday. The XPlanet P20 V2 will be used by the company as part of its agricultural services to protect crops from diseases and pests, the Chinese tech blog PingWest reported.
The newly-released quadcopter is equipped with the advanced GPS technology D-RTK which can solve difficulties in spraying pesticides with high precision while flying. The D-RTK technology does not come cheaply however. It is priced at more than RMB 10,000. A price that signals not all drone makers will be ready to adopt this technology when considering the company’s cost effectiveness.
However, XAIRCRAFT is blazing the trail for using D-RTK. The company has changed its market strategy from selling drone products to offering drone-related services in the agriculture industry.
“If XAIRCRAFT was a company selling drones, it would have to take the cost of drones into consideration and think time and again whether XAIRCRAFT should adopt expensive D-RTK technology,” Peng Bin, CEO of Xaircraft, said.
Peng also revealed that, as a drone manufacturer offering agricultural services, XAIRCRAFT has been focusing on whether the company’s services are good enough to meet farmers’ demands.
As the process of urbanization develops rapidly in China, the application of agricultural drone services will be popularized in the coming years. “In rural areas, the supply of agricultural drone services falls short of demand,” said Peng.
The China International Modern Agricultural Expo 2016 was held on April 19 with many drone makers including DJI and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China in attendance. It would seem XAIRCRAFT has spotted a market segment they can exploit in agriculture, and, as of now, XAIRCRAFT has set up two rural demonstration bases in Xinjiang and Henan.
Leading Chinese drone maker DJI launched an eight-rotor drone priced at around USD 15,000 late last year that is designed to spray pesticides on crops as its means to break into the agriculture industry.
(Top photo from leiphone.com)
