13 June 2017
Unmanned tractors sow seeds pretty fast on an expansive cotton farm belonging to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, in Northwest China, where drones fly at a constant height of 1.8 meters above wheat plants and spray fertilizer on the growing crops. These marvels mark China's latest development in precision agriculture, which relies on autonomous vehicle technology supported by the country's home-grown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). Accurate positioning based on BDS is essential for precision agriculture, said Zhang Ruifeng, head of the publicity department at the UniStrong Science and Technology Co, which is based in Beijing and offers satellite navigation and positioning services. The firm successfully developed the "Huinong," or "Smart Agriculture" precision system, China's first self-developed autonomous farming machinery, in 2016, with a maximum error margin of 2.5 centimeters in straight line operations.
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