At this week’s Drone World Expo, AeroVironment announced a new commercial information solution for agriculture. The technologies feature the Quantix drone and Decision Support System (DDS) working together to provide growers with actionable crop health information.

The new system will be available in the spring of 2017, providing the agriculture community with the same superiority and trusted certainty that comes from a company known for supplying drones to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Quantix is an innovative drone featuring powerfully simple, automated flight with an operator-in-the-loop and a unique, hybrid design that allows the craft to launch vertically and transition into horizontal flight, maximizing aerodynamic efficiency and range.

At the heart of AeroVironment’s Commercial Information Solutions business is the Decision Support System (DSS). AeroVironment’s DSS uses advanced research and algorithms to produce high-resolution datasets and analysis of fields and vineyards in agriculture, and bridges, railroad tracks, pipelines, roads and many other valuable assets. It has easy-to-use mobile interfaces with secure cloud-based data storage.

“Every day, in unforgiving environments around the world, our military customers rely on the actionable intelligence our systems deliver to help them proceed with certainty,” says Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment chief executive and president. “Today, this mission-critical insight becomes available to precision agriculture in a powerful new way. Quantix can automatically scan hundreds of acres per flight and alert growers to anomalies via smart text messages while the AV DSS securely stores the data and provides an intuitive platform for deeper image analysis.”

Nawabi added, “The growers we have been working with told us they want to focus on running their businesses, not on becoming drone experts. Working with several land grant universities and their extension programs, we created a powerfully simple drone and agronomic analytics system for farmers. Now, they will benefit from our industry-leading technologies that have been proven by countless American and allied troops working in the harshest environments on the planet.”