Drone Project – Digital Agriculture Field Data Collection
In partnership with the University of Winnipeg (UW), FPDI developed a Drone project on Digital Agriculture – Field Data Collection, funded by the Province of Manitoba – Building Sustainable Communities Grants.
The project is designed to train and employ 6 Indigenous Youth on the skills required to conduct field-level drone data collection, verify data and perform operations on the data in preparation for its use in image recognition, machine learning applications developed by the U of W. FPDI recognizes the demand and has since taken the initiative in ensuring Indigenous youth from Manitoba receive the opportunity to participate in this career field.
U of W is launching the Growing Digital Agriculture Initiative. This initiative is intended to create a significant depth of knowledge within the U of W on advancing the use of digital technologies to support modern agricultural techniques.
Just some of the many areas of knowledge development that will be the use of drones for collecting detailed field-level data on crop health, crop biomass, effectiveness of crop inputs, effectiveness of pesticides and so on.
To inquire about Drone Training, please contact Evan Colgan.
Program Details
- FPDI will train and employ 6 Indigenous youth from across the province to collect field level data using Drones in partnership with the University of Winnipeg’s Agriculture initiative.
Community Benefit
The skills being developed in this project are highly marketable and relevant providing sustainable career paths for Indigenous Youth.
Additionally, the skills being taught can be applied to a wide variety of in-community applications in the future including search-and-rescue, remote project monitoring, community development planning and environmental monitoring.
FPDI will have reusable courseware and drone capability for ongoing training.
Goal
This entire program of work is designed to develop sustainable capability and capacity in Indigenous Youth.
The courseware being developed as part of this program will be fully reusable for future courses.
The skills being developed will be directly applicable for the planned purpose but also directly applicable to a wide variety of future uses both in community and in market-oriented applications within the public and private sector.