Crop-mapping drones win MIT $100K
Drones are positioned to change people’s lives, with tech giants building unpiloted aerial vehicles to deliver packages to homes or provide Internet access across the globe. Using that idea as a jumping-off point, RaptorMaps, an MIT team designing drones that monitor crop health to boost yields, cast the winning pitch at last night’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition — which celebrated its 25th anniversary with talks from Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, past winners, and entrepreneurs. “We are making drones to feed the world,” team member Forrest Meyen, a PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics, told a capacity crowd gathered in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. RaptorMaps, which beat out seven other finalists, is building “crop-mapping” drones that fly across farmland, collecting multispectral images that, when combined with data analytics, pinpoint damaged crops. White blotches or curved streaks in fields, for instance, may signify damage by insects, weeds, or disease; dark, straight lines may signify healthy...