[Applause]
thank you for the kind introduction good
afternoon everyone today I would like to
tell you a story of how high tech meets
low tech of how a bunch of aspiring
robotics is from Singapore meets 21st
century farmers from Southeast Asia with
the hope that it would change your idea
on the role of drones in putting food on
your table three years ago we started
sing about based startup guerrilla
robotics to help businesses solve
problems using aerial imaging and
software analytics using drones or
unmanned aerial vehicle UAV we assembled
a bunch of technology that’s available
to us at a time illustrator or dreams on
PowerPoint slides and when knocking on
doors on businesses they could
potentially where benefit from the
aerial data collection but it wasn’t
long before we met
a group of investors and managers of
Hanoi plantations now most of us drop in
the city right so even though we have
seen them along the expressways we have
no idea what’s in store for us but still
we put together a plan figure out some
of the fancy new area imaging technology
as applied to agriculture and we went to
see them in their plantation now why
palm oil
let me first motivate you on why we
decided that getting ourselves into palm
oil delivers a big impact not just to
Singapore but also to the service Asian
economy you see Singapore’s neighbours
Malaysia and Indonesia collectively
produce 85 percent of the world’s parm
it is the most land efficient bio
renewable energy in the world yielding
ten times more oil than the world’s
number to buy own renewable energy
soybean it’s also extremely useful you
can find in like lipstick ice cream
shampoo chocolate biodiesel package
break detergent and so on so you because
it’s such a useful plan it should be a
surprise that negative sentiments tend
to dominate the mainstream media right
so for example this should be a very
familiar scene to everybody right this
is Singapore during the hay season the
blame is often put in the
palm oil industry even though every
other conglomerate have vowed to tackle
this issue of slash-and-burn agriculture
there’s also the issue of migrant
workers because of still a very
labor-intensive industry the
introduction of foreign minimum wage
workers affects local communities both
socially and economically also often her
how pollutants from these plantations
runoff into the rivers and polluting the
waters and control issuing of new
plantation land of a means deforestation
and the destruction of habitat for
animals like orangutans but the promote
sustainable planting practices the palm
oil industry itself created a
certification body call RSPO or round
table for sustainable palm oil to govern
itself it promotes sustainable practices
as well as carrier audits to ensure the
compliance the one such founding member
I why plantations fill its own stringent
rules last April I was immediately
removed as a supplier from major power
buyers like Nestle Colgate Palmolive
Unilever Procter & Gamble Hershey’s
Johnson Johnson Kellogg Mars
etc fortunately they took immediate
actions to address their failures and
and what the suspension was lifted in
others but not without strong protest
from the NGOs so it seems like everyone
wants to know what’s actually happening
in the plantations right the public want
to find out more about how to make
better decisions right the NGOs want to
find out what is what all of all the
illegal activities and expose them to
the media the government’s might want to
track the Lalaji things like coastlines
forests borders and plan interventions
or infrastructure projects that will
benefit the local farmers but most
importantly the plantations HQ typically
in Singapore here or Jakarta once data
of the millions of acres of transition
that they have to responsible be
responsible every single day okay so
let’s come back to our story so there we
were with a bunch of plantation
managers right with this cool new
visualizations and algorithms that we
thought would just blow them away
we demonstrated and drones geography
physics we demonstrate how we connect
few devices to the Internet we show them
geography information systems and
mapping and so on so it’s simply just
not it okay finally is that I’ll ask
questions in their authentic sub urban
Malaysian Chinese accent they went
remember which ones who so they’re not
saying that you know we are not changing
our ability on math right they’re asking
us do you guys know how to count trees
strong sue all right so as it turns out
that that is the problem that they have
is the simplest problem and it’s also
the hardest problem they need an
accurate count of the trees truly
there’s some count based being done when
the saplings left the nursery and then
another census done after it was planted
maybe it’s under settings diet but
here’s the problem a palm trees are
25-year crop it doesn’t bear fruit for
the first three years and it will peak
in production nine to twelve years and
you continue to be productive into his
20s unless it’s too sick halt to all
then you cut it down for replanting
during this long period of time some
might have already died due to land
erosion disease
flooding offset and other times new
trees are planted in its place another
current best practices each of this tree
will require a predetermined amount of
fertilizers as measured by this little
ball here this is very important because
labor aside 60 to 70% of the total
running cost of a plantation is to be
buying fertilizers and pesticides
thus plantation managers will need to
calculate the exact amount of
fertilizers to purchase for each tree or
each block based on the number of trees
if they over estimate the number of
trees some of the trees will not get
their fertilizers for them to maximize
the productivity if they underestimate
the number of trees these minimum-wage
workers are more likely to just is you
know disseminate the extra fertilizers
then lock them back automated storage
excessive fertilizers that does not get
absorbed by the palm trees will run off
it with the torrential rain water and go
into the rivers so this will destroy the
environment and also hurts the bottom
line for the plantations because of
their sheer size these plantation
managers cannot walk and check the
entire plantation every day
some of them will venture to buy
expensive satellite imagery like this
one but our Southeast Asian skies are
full of clouds
there’s always blocking their visibility
now these wet drones come into the
picture they fly very close to ground
and thus is able to take very
high-resolution picture of the pants
without cloud cover or even thick haze
to penetrate right so let’s go and con
some trees together right but first we
have to pick a drone withdrawing
everything we have fixed-wing drones
which are like little mini aeroplanes we
have multi rotor drones
we have helicopters and a now multi
rotor drones are the most edged all of
them they can take off and land
vertically in a very dense plantation
and hover in place by this case we have
no need to hover in place like what we
would do say the Singapore when we are
inspecting a building facade or
inspecting solar panels on the roof so
let’s pick a fixed-wing room it’s
aerodynamic design allows for much
longer
distance given the same amount of power
right yeah next how do we control the
drone well most of the consumer drones
you’re familiar with like those you see
may be doing events or outdoor weddings
you will pilot them with this handheld
dual-stick transmitter these remote
control devices work through radio
frequencies much like how your phone
talks to a Wi-Fi ap however they are
legal and technical limits to how much
power you can pump through these devices
so at some point in time you are going
to lose the ability to pilot by stick so
in this situation we have to count on
the computer on the drone to fly itself
here’s a popular survey grid pattern
this pattern which you can plan using
say a ground control software and you
can upload it to the drones brain before
flight the drone would then fly itself
autonomously data by onboard GPS senses
and take a picture every few seconds and
with enough overlap these pictures can
then be stitched together into one
gigantic map like this right we’re done
so are you ready how many trees are
there in this picture how many 50 about
this one
yes harder right about this one you know
what you know my strange this is
actually done I am NOT it’s not a
theoretical exercise this is actually
done today by human counters in fact in
a real typical counting operation one
guy will count and another guy will have
to check whether the first guy counted
correctly it is actually manual isn’t it
this way computer vision comes in there
are many many applications for computer
vision in the drone industry in
Singapore we typically deploy from
security and surveillance purposes
putting an eye in the sky and helping to
reduce the amount walking the security
guards need to do this petrol a large
compound but they are similar needs in
the plantation all right for tracking
unauthorized vehicles for example but
more importantly you can detect the date
trees or brown leaves so that practice
we build actions can be taken so let’s
say counting healthy trees still still a
tough nut to crack
this is specially the case for trees are
greater than five years old where the
fronds that’s a touchy shot one and
crisscross one another we need hard to
decide when it starts and stops so this
means even though you can deliver say a
95% accuracy using combo vision we will
still need the manual account to clean
up to get the accurate count for the
plantation manager tree counting is
about one of the many reports we
generate for agricultural customers on a
periodic basis this one he is a DSM or
digital surface model which is basically
a 3d reconstructed model
of a plantation with all the tree canopy
the same technologies deploy in
Singapore to reconstruct the 3d version
of the city all visible surface this is
a DTM a digital terrain model which what
you do is you digitally chop off all the
trees in the DSM to review the ground
level it is very important for civil
works in a plantation to build rows to
build bridges and most importantly to
build drains so they can drain away the
torrential rain water much like how a
canals in Singapore does the same base
model is also used to redesign roads to
minimize the distance between a tree and
a collection point and this will help
increase the productivity even with
manual labor
we also should infrared can with
infrared cameras and calculate various
indices like for biomass or
photosynthesis levels as well as perform
some of the fertilizer spring operations
or some kinds of crops like rice all
right now with the upcoming
proliferation of drones in the
plantation would it be great if we the
consumer gets to see exactly what’s
happening and get access to all these
aerial data as well we can use that data
to make a very informed decision but on
what goods that we came to purchase
whether the goods came from sustainable
sources or not well this road to it this
this future it will be very long one and
if you ask me it will have to start from
these plantation managers first you see
why let me bring you through how some of
these agriculture MSC’s work you see
most of them owns a large chunk of the
supply chain
they start from the mills who turns the
palm fruit into crude palm oil or crude
kernel palm oil all the way down to the
factories including something in in
Singapore a that turns them to further
downstream products reduce the business
risks and title capital
most of these plantation MNCs won’t own
all the land
and all the palm trees they fit into the
supply chain a huge proportion of their
inputs comes from these smaller
plantation holders who don’t have bills
and certainly have no access to advanced
technology as they have they sign up
with the MNC to become a contract farmer
but these nameless locals but not these
guys I’m often the culprits when it
comes to employing traditional methods
in land clearing and planting not
because they don’t know any better but
because they don’t have the economic
reason to do better this is why I feel
drones will become the future de-facto
way relationships are managed between
the downstream and the upstream because
every buyer would want to see when we
want to work with transparent and
responsible farmers so that they can
claim that all your oil comes from
sustainable sources therefore all those
these plantation managers are using
drones to raise productivity kind of
manpower maybe reduce risk today in
their own plantation I think we are just
warming up the totally new future where
we all can see where our food comes from
right so today I end up today by sharing
view my dream and hopefully some of you
can make this a reality imagine working
on walking into NTUC fair price a on a
wide section epic a bottle of wine
through your maybe I don’t know
intelligent glass then right you can
immediately see the wynia where this
wine wall came from and zoom in to see
the color of the grip when it was
harvested which determines the exact
ripeness which is critical to the wine
production quality similarly you could
maybe walk into maybe you can find out
the exact sector of palm trees where
maybe from Sumatra right well where the
panther is milled and made into the
conditioning agent of your shampoo that
you just picked up knowing very well
that all of them are professionally and
ethically and sustainably planted and
harvested
and finally you could you could maybe
scan the label of this the
identification labor of these
delicious-looking mouse and wong durian
and find in a map in bento Parham where
it comes from
and maybe even know the time it was
picked up so we can determine its
freshness wouldn’t this bigger kind of
future we want to build together thank
you very much
[Applause]
thank you for the kind introduction good
afternoon everyone today I would like to
tell you a story of how high tech meets
low tech of how a bunch of aspiring
robotics is from Singapore meets 21st
century farmers from Southeast Asia with
the hope that it would change your idea
on the role of drones in putting food on
your table three years ago we started
sing about based startup guerrilla
robotics to help businesses solve
problems using aerial imaging and
software analytics using drones or
unmanned aerial vehicle UAV we assembled
a bunch of technology that’s available
to us at a time illustrator or dreams on
PowerPoint slides and when knocking on
doors on businesses they could
potentially where benefit from the
aerial data collection but it wasn’t
long before we met
a group of investors and managers of
Hanoi plantations now most of us drop in
the city right so even though we have
seen them along the expressways we have
no idea what’s in store for us but still
we put together a plan figure out some
of the fancy new area imaging technology
as applied to agriculture and we went to
see them in their plantation now why
palm oil
let me first motivate you on why we
decided that getting ourselves into palm
oil delivers a big impact not just to
Singapore but also to the service Asian
economy you see Singapore’s neighbours
Malaysia and Indonesia collectively
produce 85 percent of the world’s parm
it is the most land efficient bio
renewable energy in the world yielding
ten times more oil than the world’s
number to buy own renewable energy
soybean it’s also extremely useful you
can find in like lipstick ice cream
shampoo chocolate biodiesel package
break detergent and so on so you because
it’s such a useful plan it should be a
surprise that negative sentiments tend
to dominate the mainstream media right
so for example this should be a very
familiar scene to everybody right this
is Singapore during the hay season the
blame is often put in the
palm oil industry even though every
other conglomerate have vowed to tackle
this issue of slash-and-burn agriculture
there’s also the issue of migrant
workers because of still a very
labor-intensive industry the
introduction of foreign minimum wage
workers affects local communities both
socially and economically also often her
how pollutants from these plantations
runoff into the rivers and polluting the
waters and control issuing of new
plantation land of a means deforestation
and the destruction of habitat for
animals like orangutans but the promote
sustainable planting practices the palm
oil industry itself created a
certification body call RSPO or round
table for sustainable palm oil to govern
itself it promotes sustainable practices
as well as carrier audits to ensure the
compliance the one such founding member
I why plantations fill its own stringent
rules last April I was immediately
removed as a supplier from major power
buyers like Nestle Colgate Palmolive
Unilever Procter & Gamble Hershey’s
Johnson Johnson Kellogg Mars
etc fortunately they took immediate
actions to address their failures and
and what the suspension was lifted in
others but not without strong protest
from the NGOs so it seems like everyone
wants to know what’s actually happening
in the plantations right the public want
to find out more about how to make
better decisions right the NGOs want to
find out what is what all of all the
illegal activities and expose them to
the media the government’s might want to
track the Lalaji things like coastlines
forests borders and plan interventions
or infrastructure projects that will
benefit the local farmers but most
importantly the plantations HQ typically
in Singapore here or Jakarta once data
of the millions of acres of transition
that they have to responsible be
responsible every single day okay so
let’s come back to our story so there we
were with a bunch of plantation
managers right with this cool new
visualizations and algorithms that we
thought would just blow them away
we demonstrated and drones geography
physics we demonstrate how we connect
few devices to the Internet we show them
geography information systems and
mapping and so on so it’s simply just
not it okay finally is that I’ll ask
questions in their authentic sub urban
Malaysian Chinese accent they went
remember which ones who so they’re not
saying that you know we are not changing
our ability on math right they’re asking
us do you guys know how to count trees
strong sue all right so as it turns out
that that is the problem that they have
is the simplest problem and it’s also
the hardest problem they need an
accurate count of the trees truly
there’s some count based being done when
the saplings left the nursery and then
another census done after it was planted
maybe it’s under settings diet but
here’s the problem a palm trees are
25-year crop it doesn’t bear fruit for
the first three years and it will peak
in production nine to twelve years and
you continue to be productive into his
20s unless it’s too sick halt to all
then you cut it down for replanting
during this long period of time some
might have already died due to land
erosion disease
flooding offset and other times new
trees are planted in its place another
current best practices each of this tree
will require a predetermined amount of
fertilizers as measured by this little
ball here this is very important because
labor aside 60 to 70% of the total
running cost of a plantation is to be
buying fertilizers and pesticides
thus plantation managers will need to
calculate the exact amount of
fertilizers to purchase for each tree or
each block based on the number of trees
if they over estimate the number of
trees some of the trees will not get
their fertilizers for them to maximize
the productivity if they underestimate
the number of trees these minimum-wage
workers are more likely to just is you
know disseminate the extra fertilizers
then lock them back automated storage
excessive fertilizers that does not get
absorbed by the palm trees will run off
it with the torrential rain water and go
into the rivers so this will destroy the
environment and also hurts the bottom
line for the plantations because of
their sheer size these plantation
managers cannot walk and check the
entire plantation every day
some of them will venture to buy
expensive satellite imagery like this
one but our Southeast Asian skies are
full of clouds
there’s always blocking their visibility
now these wet drones come into the
picture they fly very close to ground
and thus is able to take very
high-resolution picture of the pants
without cloud cover or even thick haze
to penetrate right so let’s go and con
some trees together right but first we
have to pick a drone withdrawing
everything we have fixed-wing drones
which are like little mini aeroplanes we
have multi rotor drones
we have helicopters and a now multi
rotor drones are the most edged all of
them they can take off and land
vertically in a very dense plantation
and hover in place by this case we have
no need to hover in place like what we
would do say the Singapore when we are
inspecting a building facade or
inspecting solar panels on the roof so
let’s pick a fixed-wing room it’s
aerodynamic design allows for much
longer
distance given the same amount of power
right yeah next how do we control the
drone well most of the consumer drones
you’re familiar with like those you see
may be doing events or outdoor weddings
you will pilot them with this handheld
dual-stick transmitter these remote
control devices work through radio
frequencies much like how your phone
talks to a Wi-Fi ap however they are
legal and technical limits to how much
power you can pump through these devices
so at some point in time you are going
to lose the ability to pilot by stick so
in this situation we have to count on
the computer on the drone to fly itself
here’s a popular survey grid pattern
this pattern which you can plan using
say a ground control software and you
can upload it to the drones brain before
flight the drone would then fly itself
autonomously data by onboard GPS senses
and take a picture every few seconds and
with enough overlap these pictures can
then be stitched together into one
gigantic map like this right we’re done
so are you ready how many trees are
there in this picture how many 50 about
this one
yes harder right about this one you know
what you know my strange this is
actually done I am NOT it’s not a
theoretical exercise this is actually
done today by human counters in fact in
a real typical counting operation one
guy will count and another guy will have
to check whether the first guy counted
correctly it is actually manual isn’t it
this way computer vision comes in there
are many many applications for computer
vision in the drone industry in
Singapore we typically deploy from
security and surveillance purposes
putting an eye in the sky and helping to
reduce the amount walking the security
guards need to do this petrol a large
compound but they are similar needs in
the plantation all right for tracking
unauthorized vehicles for example but
more importantly you can detect the date
trees or brown leaves so that practice
we build actions can be taken so let’s
say counting healthy trees still still a
tough nut to crack
this is specially the case for trees are
greater than five years old where the
fronds that’s a touchy shot one and
crisscross one another we need hard to
decide when it starts and stops so this
means even though you can deliver say a
95% accuracy using combo vision we will
still need the manual account to clean
up to get the accurate count for the
plantation manager tree counting is
about one of the many reports we
generate for agricultural customers on a
periodic basis this one he is a DSM or
digital surface model which is basically
a 3d reconstructed model
of a plantation with all the tree canopy
the same technologies deploy in
Singapore to reconstruct the 3d version
of the city all visible surface this is
a DTM a digital terrain model which what
you do is you digitally chop off all the
trees in the DSM to review the ground
level it is very important for civil
works in a plantation to build rows to
build bridges and most importantly to
build drains so they can drain away the
torrential rain water much like how a
canals in Singapore does the same base
model is also used to redesign roads to
minimize the distance between a tree and
a collection point and this will help
increase the productivity even with
manual labor
we also should infrared can with
infrared cameras and calculate various
indices like for biomass or
photosynthesis levels as well as perform
some of the fertilizer spring operations
or some kinds of crops like rice all
right now with the upcoming
proliferation of drones in the
plantation would it be great if we the
consumer gets to see exactly what’s
happening and get access to all these
aerial data as well we can use that data
to make a very informed decision but on
what goods that we came to purchase
whether the goods came from sustainable
sources or not well this road to it this
this future it will be very long one and
if you ask me it will have to start from
these plantation managers first you see
why let me bring you through how some of
these agriculture MSC’s work you see
most of them owns a large chunk of the
supply chain
they start from the mills who turns the
palm fruit into crude palm oil or crude
kernel palm oil all the way down to the
factories including something in in
Singapore a that turns them to further
downstream products reduce the business
risks and title capital
most of these plantation MNCs won’t own
all the land
and all the palm trees they fit into the
supply chain a huge proportion of their
inputs comes from these smaller
plantation holders who don’t have bills
and certainly have no access to advanced
technology as they have they sign up
with the MNC to become a contract farmer
but these nameless locals but not these
guys I’m often the culprits when it
comes to employing traditional methods
in land clearing and planting not
because they don’t know any better but
because they don’t have the economic
reason to do better this is why I feel
drones will become the future de-facto
way relationships are managed between
the downstream and the upstream because
every buyer would want to see when we
want to work with transparent and
responsible farmers so that they can
claim that all your oil comes from
sustainable sources therefore all those
these plantation managers are using
drones to raise productivity kind of
manpower maybe reduce risk today in
their own plantation I think we are just
warming up the totally new future where
we all can see where our food comes from
right so today I end up today by sharing
view my dream and hopefully some of you
can make this a reality imagine working
on walking into NTUC fair price a on a
wide section epic a bottle of wine
through your maybe I don’t know
intelligent glass then right you can
immediately see the wynia where this
wine wall came from and zoom in to see
the color of the grip when it was
harvested which determines the exact
ripeness which is critical to the wine
production quality similarly you could
maybe walk into maybe you can find out
the exact sector of palm trees where
maybe from Sumatra right well where the
panther is milled and made into the
conditioning agent of your shampoo that
you just picked up knowing very well
that all of them are professionally and
ethically and sustainably planted and
harvested
and finally you could you could maybe
scan the label of this the
identification labor of these
delicious-looking mouse and wong durian
and find in a map in bento Parham where
it comes from
and maybe even know the time it was
picked up so we can determine its
freshness wouldn’t this bigger kind of
future we want to build together thank
you very much
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: