XAG Co., Ltd., formerly known as XAircraft, is a Chinese manufacturer of agricultural drones headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong. Founded in 2007 by Peng Bin, Justin Gong and others, the company initially developed consumer drones. After visiting a cotton farm in Xinjiang and witnessing how the aging farmers had to strap heavy pesticide tanks onto they backs and labor for hours to spray the chemicals over their crops, they decided to take what the company was doing with drone technology and specialize in agricultural UAVs. With the intent to help increase the quality and quantity of crops produced, as well as lessen the strain on farmers, XAG took initiative and developed crop-dusting drones in 2013, and by 2019, it controlled more than half of China's market for agricultural drones. Significantly contributing to the future of crop yield and precision farming in China. XAG has around 1,400 employees, and in addition to precision farming drones the company has delved into designing mapping drones and agricultural AI systems for farmers. Based on agricultural drones, XAG provides agricultural mapping drones and agricultural hardware services. Combined with visual recognition, artificial intelligence, farmland land information and crop data, XAG has also made innovations in agricultural finance and agricultural information systems.
History
In 2007, XAG was founded by Bin Peng, Justin Gong and others geeks; In 2010, Released the “milestone product” X650 Quad-copter, accounted for 70% of the multi-rotor global market. In 2012, Launched “SUPERX” Flight Control System, started to explore the application of UAS. In 2013, XAG transformed the company's business direction, mainly developing agricultural drone systems. Started Agricultural applications, ran trial operations in Xinjiang China. In 2013, Found XPLANET service company, started to provide plant protection services to farmers. In 2016, XGEOMATICS and XAG ACADEMY was established. Released SUPERX2 RTK Plant Protection Flight Control System and P20 2017 Plant Protection UAS. Achieved centimeter-level accuracy on flight and spray control in the field, provided services to over 50,000 hectares of fields in China. In 2017, XAG Japan was established, while XAG ACADEMY Australia touched ground. Released the new P Series Agricultural UAS, C2000 Intelligent Mapping Drone, Intelligent Field Monitoring, equipment sharing platform and Agricultural AI Engine. Cooperated with Ant Financial to launch the “Deposit-free” Rental of Agricultural UAS. Provided plant protection and land surveying service to more than 230,000 farmers. In 2018, XAG, Bayer and Alibaba Rural Taobao joined hands to launch the Sustainable Farming Programme. Released an undated version of P Series Plant Protection UAS. Launched multi-purpose UAS platform XMission, new XIoT field monitoring models and XAG Agriculture Service mini-programme. Established XAG Education for bringing up professional talents of agriculture and digital farming.
Products
P Series
The XAG P Series UAV is an aerial spray system designed for plant protection purposes. After a short training period, it will allow people to safely and efficiently spray with simple but intelligent operation. Specification:
Rotary Atomisation
RTK Positioning
Maximum Effective Flight Speed: 12 m/s
Spraying Volume: 5.6L/min
XMission
XAG XMission is an industrial level multifunctional UAV. XAG XMission can perform aerial operations accurately in a variety of situations, from field mapping, remote sensing monitoring to collecting crop growth information. Specification:
Starting from 2018 XAG and Harper Adams University based in UK formed a mutually beneficial collaboration with each other to further the advance of agri-tech and encourage farmers in the region to embrace emerging UAV technology such as XAG's many aerial platforms. Harper Adams University is recognized as a leader in the field of agriculture and robotics technology and there could be no better partnership to advance UAV technology both nationally in the UK and internationally.
Bayer, XAG, and Alibaba Group Sustainable Agriculture Alliance
German pharmaceuticals and life science mega corporation Bayer along with XAG and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings Lt’d Rural Taobao launched a joint project to support sustainable agriculture through advancing technology ultimately to increase food quality supplied to consumers all the while maintaining low prices. With XAG's ability to collect data from agricultural sites and apply the processed data to precision plant protection to make the process quantifiable and traceable, which ensures that the use of pesticides and fertilizers is not abused, and that food grown for consumption is safe and of high quality.
Cooperate with Huawei to Develop 5G Smart Agriculture
Explore the potential applications of agricultural 5G, AI and cloud computing. The data of XAG farmland equipment can be transmitted at high speed through 5G and cloud computing. And the live video monitoring, remote diagnostics and on-site prescription would emerge to enable precision agriculture. XAG and Huawei jointly developed the agricultural IoT system in 2016. XAG FarmMonitor and FarmCam can smooth monitor of crop growth status in real time through Huawei's smart sensors.
XAG took initiative to contribute to the betterment of humanity by participating in a grassland reclamation project in Sichuan province within mainland China. Fragile grassland ecosystems in Sichuan have suffered for decades. With aerial seed spreading system environmental activists are able to replant hectares upon hectares of grass and help nurture the newly planted seeds to replace and make better the sprawling prairies that some thought were lost forever.
Electronic Bees
The pollination crisis faced by many countries is a causing global concern and caution for the rapid decline of the bee population. Bees, though small, have an immense impact on our lives. These tiny farmers in the sky have supported the global agriculture cycle for centuries, but bee populations have been dying out recently. Farmers and scientists alike have been searching for a solution to the declining pollination problem. They stumbled upon the realization that aerial spraying systems aboard UAVs such as XAG's P-series drones could act as “electronic bees” and pollinate cash crops in the absence of bees. Experiments were done in Australia and Xinjiang to test out the feasibility of this pollination method. It turns out drones are an excellent substitute and with further innovation serve as a sustainable and efficient alternative to reduce stress on the regional bee population. Which ultimately encourages repopulation as well as pollination of target crops.
The hungry fall armyworm can destroy the entire corn field in just a few days or even overnight. Currently, over 100 countries and 80 crop varieties in the world have been infected. The agriculture drone developed by XAG has a spraying efficiency of 14 hectares per hour, which can attack the infected farmland and kill pests on a large scale, thus reducing the degree of moth migration. At present, this technology has been extended from China to Vietnam, Zambia and other regions.
