Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, e.g., drones) are a common tool for many civil applications, including precision agriculture, transportation, delivery services, rescue missions, law enforcement, and more. Remote sensing technologies used in conjunction with drones are a dominant application in precision agriculture. Multispectral instrumentation attached to UAVs allows the user to observe multiple parameters, including the normalized difference vegetation index which can represent crop stresses induced by various factors (e.g., drought, insect outbreak, nutrient loss, and other diseases). However, little research has been done to apply drones to accomplish a mission-oriented actionable task in agriculture, such as insect sampling. We propose a low-cost, open source-based live insect scouting drone named 'iDrone Bee' to benefit the integrated pest management (IPM) community by minimizing time and efforts of human interventions while collecting live insects in agricultural fields. Herein we present instruction and operation procedures to build and operate an iDrone Bee for insect scouting in an agricultural ecosystem and validate the system in an alfalfa seed field. The findings of this investigation demonstrate that a drone-based insect scouting method may be a valuable tool to benefit the IPM community.

中文翻译：

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低成本现场昆虫侦察无人机：iDrone Bee。

无人驾驶飞行器（UAV，例如无人机）是许多民用应用的常用工具，包括精准农业、运输、送货服务、救援任务、执法等。与无人机结合使用的遥感技术是精准农业的主要应用。无人机附带的多光谱仪器允许用户观察多个参数，包括标准化的植被指数差异，该指数可以表示由各种因素（例如干旱、昆虫爆发、养分流失和其他疾病）引起的作物胁迫。然而，很少有研究将无人机应用于农业中以任务为导向的可操作任务，例如昆虫采样。我们提出了一种低成本、基于开源的实时昆虫侦察无人机，名为“iDrone Bee” 通过在农田采集活虫时最大限度地减少人为干预的时间和精力，从而使虫害综合治理 (IPM) 社区受益。在此，我们介绍了构建和操作 iDrone Bee 的说明和操作程序，用于在农业生态系统中进行昆虫侦察，并在苜蓿种子田中验证该系统。这项调查的结果表明，基于无人机的昆虫侦察方法可能是有益于 IPM 社区的宝贵工具。