A review of Implementation and Challenges of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Spraying Applications and Crop Monitoring in Indonesia

Abstract: The rapid development of technology has brought unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to become widely known in the current era. The market of UAVs is also predicted to continue growing with related technologies in the future. UAVs have been used in various sectors, including livestock, forestry, and agriculture. In agricultural applications, UAVs are highly capable of increasing the productivity of the farm and reducing farmers' workload. This study examines the urgency of UAV implementation in the agriculture sector. A short history of UAVs is provided in this paper to portray the development of UAVs from time to time. The classification of UAVs is also discussed to differentiate various types of UAVs. The application of UAVs in spraying and crop monitoring is based on the previous studies that have been done by many scientific groups and researchers who are working closely to propose solutions for agriculture-related issues. Furthermore, the limitations of UAV applications are also identified. The challenges in implementing agricultural UAVs in Indonesia are also presented. Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle, agricultural UAV, spraying, crop monitoring. 1. Introduction According to the United Nations (UN), the world population is projected to reach 9.7 billion people in 2050 (UN, 2015). This vast population would potentially double the food demand in the future (Hunter et al., 2017). Consequently, the ever-growing population that would emerge could cause food shortages in the future. This issue has become a severe problem since the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced similar speculation in which the current agricultural production must be increased by 70 percent by 2050 to meet the increasing demand for highquality food (Mundial, 2021). Many people suffering from hunger become a signal of how severe the food shortage is, and it was reported that more than 820 million people in 2018 were considered undernutrition (WHO, 2019). Surprisingly, the earlier data mentioned shows the increasing tendency towards people suffering from hunger since only around 690 million people were considered suffering from hunger in 2015.