Drones can now measure muckpile fragmentation using AI that is trained to detect rock edges. Drones have become a common sight in quarries over the last few years. The industry overcame early teething issues of hardware reliability, operator training and regulatory licensing, with many sites bringing their drone operations in house. The biggest challenge quarry managers now face is how to use their drones to generate real cost savings. Most sites start using drones for aerial inspections and basic mapping and surveying.

A SZ DJI Technology Co. drone is displayed during keynote presentations on artificial intelligence at the Microsoft Developers Build Conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Monday, May 7, 2018. The public might consider them nuisances, but in the commercial market, drones are valuable data collection devices. Their primary task is to capture, store, and transmit data. So as IT departments consider integrating more drone data into existing enterprise business processes, they face new data governance requirements. As drone technology matures, it is important for companies to know what it means for their information technology and software.

Agriculture is the industry that accompanied the evolution of humanity from pre-historic times to modern days and fulfilled faithfully one of its most basic needs: food supply. Today this still remains its core mission, but it's integrated in a more complex than ever mechanism driven by multiple sociological, economic and environmental forces. This $5 trillion industry representing 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment and 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions continues to keep pace with world's evolution, changing tremendously over the past years. Digital and technological advancements are taking over the industry, enhancing food production while adding value to the entire farm-to-fork supply chain and helping it make use of natural resources more efficiently. Data generated by sensors or agricultural drones collected at farms, on the field or during transportation offer a wealth of information about soil, seeds, livestock, crops, costs, farm equipment or the use of water and fertilizer.

Agriculture is the industry that accompanied the evolution of humanity from pre-historic times to modern days and fulfilled faithfully one of its most basic needs: food supply. Today this still remains its core mission, but it's integrated in a more complex than ever mechanism driven by multiple sociological, economic and environmental forces. This $5 trillion industry representing 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment and 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions continues to keep pace with world's evolution, changing tremendously over the past years. Digital and technological advancements are taking over the industry, enhancing food production while adding value to the entire farm-to-fork supply chain and helping it make use of natural resources more efficiently. Data generated by sensors or agricultural drones collected at farms, on the field or during transportation offer a wealth of information about soil, seeds, livestock, crops, costs, farm equipment or the use of water and fertilizer.

Agriculture is the industry that accompanied the evolution of humanity from pre-historic times to modern days and fulfilled faithfully one of its most basic needs: food supply. Today this still remains its core mission, but it's integrated in a more complex than ever mechanism driven by multiple sociological, economic and environmental forces. This $5 trillion industry representing 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment and 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions continues to keep pace with world's evolution, changing tremendously over the past years. Digital and technological advancements are taking over the industry, enhancing food production while adding value to the entire farm-to-fork supply chain and helping it make use of natural resources more efficiently. Data generated by sensors or agricultural drones collected at farms, on the field or during transportation offer a wealth of information about soil, seeds, livestock, crops, costs, farm equipment or the use of water and fertilizer.

I've written a few times recently about a number of projects that are using drone technology to monitor vast environments. As you can perhaps imagine, with such endeavors, there is a huge amount of data generated, and while it presents rich pickings from a scientific perspective, nonetheless raises challenges about how that data can be managed. A recent study tested the role automation could play in both easing the burden on research teams and making data analysis more effective. The paper revealed that when teams are looking for optimal speed and accuracy that an approach that combines both machine and human can be the best. The researchers used the analysis of aerial images taken by camera drones in the Kuzikus wildlife reserve as their testing ground. The drones were used to count the wildlife in the park, and generated a huge amount of images over the course of the study.