Skippy Scout version 3
Automated scouting by drone, from flight to answer in minutes
Weed maps and spot-spray files, cereal establishment, 360° Spheres, reports, docks and a new Control Center.
Who we are
Built by farmers who know drones
Drone Ag is an agricultural technology company in Northumberland, founded by arable farmer Jack Wrangham. We build Skippy Scout on our own farm, so it has to work in a real field, on a real day.
What Skippy Scout does
See the whole field, check the detail, act the same day
1. Fly
Load the boundary, pick scout points, press Fly. About five minutes in the air.
2. Measure
One flight becomes a 360° Sphere and maps of the whole field: weeds, variability, zones.
3. Check
The drone visits each scout point for very high-resolution photos, so you check the map without walking.
4. Act
Spray files, variable-rate files and reports, ready in minutes for the sprayer or the agronomist.
One flight
Five minutes in the air
- About 1 min for the 360° Sphere of the whole field
- Under 4 min for six scout points, photographed up close
- Under 5 min to build the Sphere after upload
Weed maps and spot-spray grids
15 minutes
From the end of the upload to a weed map and a spray file sized to your sprayer. The same day you fly, not days later.
Weed maps
The whole field, from one flight
- Full-field maps from the Sphere in minutes
- Custom weed and variability maps
- Zones extracted automatically
- Weeds measured separately from the crop
Automatic scouting
Check the map from the air, not on foot
Scout points go on the map and the drone visits each one by itself, taking very high-resolution photos.
Many services stop at the map. Skippy checks it for you, so you never walk the field to ground-truth it.
Spot-spray grids
A spray plan that fits the sprayer
Exports as ISOXML, Shapefile or GeoJSON for the sprayer’s terminal, about 15 minutes after upload.
What it could save
Where weeds grow in patches, spray only the patches
| Spray grid covers | Herbicide saved | Saving per 100 ha |
|---|---|---|
| 20% of the field (tight patches) | about 80% | about £4,200 |
| 35% of the field (larger patches) | about 65% | about £3,400 |
| 50% of the field | about half | about £2,650 |
Against Skippy Pro from £3.50 per ha a year. See the oilseed rape case study →
Oilseed rape, clethodim at about £19/ha then propyzamide at about £34/ha (about £53/ha, 2026 UK prices). Savings depend on the field, the weeds and the products.
Variable-rate zones
Crop only
Zones ground-truthed by the drone, and a GAI that leaves the weeds out, so every nutrient rate is set on the crop alone.
Variable-rate zones
Map the field, then ground-truth every zone
Every zone, measured up close
Two scout points, two very different crops
Nutrition by zone
Crop-only GAI, zone by zone
5. Set the rates. The average GAI of each zone’s scout points sets its nutrient or N rate, on a grid aligned to the tramlines, ready for the sprayer or spreader.
Ready the same day. The maps and the scouting take less than 20 minutes, so the rates can be on the spreader or sprayer the same day you fly.
Crop only. Weeds are segmented out of every close-up, so the GAI describes the crop alone: a truer reading than a map that counts weeds as crop.
6. Is variable rate worth it? The crop uniformity reading shows how even the whole field is, so you can decide before you vary a rate.
Cereal establishment
Row by row
How every row came up: occupancy, gaps, row width and direction, measured from the same scout flights.
Cereal establishment
How the rows came up
- Overall establishment status
- Row occupancy and gaps
- Row width and direction
- Weed detection (beta)
Early access
Cereal establishment
Every scout point, measured row by row
Improved Spheres
The field in 360°, in minutes
- Built in under 5 minutes
- Higher resolution
- More accurate
- New layers, hazards marked
Improved reports
One report for the whole job
Drones, docks and pre-flight checks
Your drone, or one that flies itself
Any drone
Upload images from any drone.
Docks
DJI Dock and FlightHub 2 integration, for remote automated flights.
Pre-flight checks
Airspace, hazards and weather, checked automatically.
Risk assessments
Risk assessment forms filled in automatically.
Control Center
Everything in one place
- New web and mobile interface
- Import fields and layers from anywhere
- Export data and reports in many formats
- Monitor flight status live
Enterprise
Skippy inside your own platform
White label
Skippy under your own brand: your name, logo and colours on the app, the Control Center and the reports your customers see.
API access
Fields, flights, maps and measurements available to your own systems, so the data flows where your team already works.
Custom integration
Connected to the other software platforms you use: farm management, agronomy and trial systems, dashboards.
All available on a custom quote. Talk to us →
Get started
Try it on one field
Fly one field and we will run the analysis and show you the result.