December 14th, 2018, GUANGZHOU China – XAG’s annual conference XAAC 2018 was successfully held in Guangzhou, under the theme of “the Future of Digital Farming”. 

- XAG launched an upgraded P Series Plant Protection UAS and a brand-new MultifunctionalUAS Platform - XMission. 

- Meanwhile, the conference also unveiled a series of aftersales service plans, and a strategic brand - XAG Education. 

- Partners from around the world, experts in various fields, scholars and industry leaders were invited to share cutting-edge views on how to empower agricultural production with technology and big data. 

- The annual gathering of agricultural science and technology attracted more than 1200 attendees, while more than 50, 000 people watched online streaming at the same time.

2019 P Series Plant Protection UAS

XMission Launch

At the opening address, Bayer Crop Science Greater China Country Head Weidong Huang and Ant Financial Vice President of Branding and Corporate Communications Liang Chen gave keynote speeches.

Weidong Huang said, “Only when the newly emerged tech solving actual problems for users can it develop sustainably and be accepted by the market and consumers. In our analysis, digital farming, including UAS plant protection technologies, has been through such process, and will enter a stage of stable development.”

Liang Chen pointed out that, “the collaboration with XAG has attracted a lot of young population return to their rural hometown. We hope to do more collaborations like this and give more possibilities to rural China and agriculture itself.”

In the keynote session on "the Future of Digital Farming," industry experts were invited to give presentations on stage, including Glenn McTaggart, CEO of LandMark Group Australia; Lin Tong, director of new business at Bayer Crop Science (China); Zheng Jia, deputy general manager of rural finance department at Ant Financial; Professor Yubin Lan, academicians of European Academy of Science, Arts and Humanities; Huaze Gong, co-founder and CEO of McFly Technology; Dr. Mingbao Zeng of Canada's A & L Laboratories. They shared thoughts about the cooperation opportunities and possibilities of digital farming from different fields and perspectives.

XAG VP Justin Gong gave speech on microtrends in agriculture, “To grasp the future direction of agriculture, we must pay attention to the microtrends in it. Microtrends can help us better understand the general trend of agricultural development and seize new opportunities in the next round of changes in production relations.”

Data indicates that UAS plant protection is still a microtrend in agriculture. There are around 50,000 professionals working for UAS plant protection related fields in China. Yet this number is merely one out of ten thousand (0.001%) of the total agricultural professionals, but already accounts for 5% of the farmland automation in China. Such microtrend is affecting greatly to the agricultural industry. 99% of the people might not know about advantages of UAS plant protection, however, they are already consuming the farm product managed by UAS and related digital farming tools.

Despite the fact that the generation born in 1980s and 1990s is serving as the major work force in UAS plant protection, more and more senior users are joining the industry as well.  As more and more 1960s, 1970s generation joining the industry, their role in UAS plant protection workflow will be differentiated from the younger users. 

XAG President Bin Peng explained how the company is implementing UAS and other technologies in agriculture to diversify the industry. Through the introduction of innovative console methods, XAG aims to bring more flexibility to UAS plant protection professionals, refining division of labor, thus improving relations of production in agriculture.

In later part of XAAC 2018, a panel discussion on “Agriculture, from Mechanization to Digitalization” was held with experts from China’s agricultural machinery associations and research institutes. The launch of XAG Education announced UAS application related courses to enter colleague and undergraduate education system, aiming to nurture more professionals for agricultural plant protection and UAS application in order to achieve sustainable development of the industry.

Newly released product features:

- 2019 P Series Plant Protection UAS comes with IP67 protection rating, and all modules are rinseable.

- 2019 P Series Plant Protection UAS adopts a fast assembly airframe design, largely reduced the amount of screws on board with the aim to simplify maintenance difficulties, meanwhile strengthens the protection to core modules of the UAS against impact.

- New smart liquid tank for P Series Plant Protection UAS can detect liquid volume without flowmeters, and capacity has upgraded to maximum of 16L.

- Fast charger improves the battery rotation in operation, the charging time has reduced from over 45mins to within 30mins.

- New ACB1 digital communication backclip and ACS1 single-handed controller, together with PilotPhone and ARC1 to form multiple control schemes.

- SUPERX3 Pro Flight Controller enables greater capacity, allowing threeIMU and two RTK positioning and navigation modules, as well as all-rounded obstacle avoidance system.

- XMission Multi-purpose UAS is light and foldable, while equipped with RTK precision positioning module.

- XMisson is capable of attaching various camera modules on board for orthophoto, multispectral images, prescription map or other imaging purpose.

- XMission provides SDK for users to customize operations according to needs.

For detail enquiries, please contact: info@xag.cn