Industrial drones and quadcopters benefit from pluggable drone arms

Agriculture faces many challenges. These include increasingly unpredictable weather conditions and the need to improve the carbon footprint of agricultural processes. Precision farming is one of the most important strategies for meeting these challenges and ensuring sustainable, efficient and resilient agriculture.

Industrial drones are becoming increasingly important in paving the way for precision agriculture. From high-precision agricultural mapping to the precise application of water, fertilisers and pesticides, agricultural drones and quadcopters are a groundbreaking innovation for the daily challenges faced by farmers.

Folding arms are widely used in industrial drones and quadcopters. They enable drones to be used in difficult terrain and to reach high altitudes. Thanks to the folding mechanism, the drone arms can be folded in and out quickly and easily. This naturally offers enormous flexibility, but the biggest disadvantages become apparent when transporting the drone.

Folding arms cannot be easily plugged in. Even when folded, the dimensions of the drone or quadcopter are still larger than necessary. Plug-in arms offer greater flexibility here. With the ICC 20 drone arm connectors, users can plug in and remove the drone arms as needed. The package size of the drone can be reduced by up to 30%.

Modular architectures and platform concepts are state of the art for ensuring high machine flexibility. This also applies to industrial drones. Adding additional drone arms for transporting heavier loads and changing tools are common procedures for responding to different tasks. Plug-in interfaces are essential for enabling the necessary modularity.

With the ICC 20 drone arm connector, HARTING offers a reliable solution that has been specially developed for harsh environments such as agricultural processes. The modular industrial circular connector offers inserts for combining power, signal, data or pneumatics. In addition, it enables the integration of all inserts from the proven Han® 3A rectangular connector series.

A wide range of efficient solutions for energy, signal and data transmission – from simple Han® C, Han D® or Han® E blocks to USB, RJ45 and other data interfaces – can be used. The size 3A insulators also offer various connection technologies, such as the new tool-free push-in technology. This results in more than 50 different combinations of connector inserts.

Regardless of the industry, high system availability is key to success. Similar to the output of production facilities, agricultural drones and quadcopters can only enable precision farming if they are operational. Short average repair times after system failures are essential. Maintenance processes must therefore be efficient to ensure fast and reliable troubleshooting.

Hard-wired drone arms can quickly become a bottleneck in the maintenance of industrial drones. Troubleshooting is time-consuming and often requires specialists to disconnect the connections. Industrial connectors offer many advantages over hard-wired solutions. Drone arms can be easily plugged in and pulled out again to replace defective arms or switch between different variants.