India, Jan. 9 -- An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying close to the ground and capturing high-resolution images to thrash out a digital map based on data on weather patterns and topography may soon pave the way for precision farming.

"It can provide a far better result with its ability to cover larger swathes of land from a close range at a fraction of the cost compared to satellites," claimed Shreepoorna S Rao, founder of dronetech startup Arctus Aerospace, which builds and operates high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft to collect high-resolution geospatial and earth-observation data.

Founded in 2024, Arctus is the brainchild of Rao, an IIT Madras alumnus in his early twenties. Even though in the prototype stage, the...