First flight 2013 | ||
Green Heaven UAVs are Chinese UAVs developed by Lechang Green Heaven Fruits and Vegetable Circulation Specialized Cooperative (乐昌市绿天果蔬流通专业合作社) in Pingshi, Guangdong, a cooperative also more commonly known as Green Heaven (绿色天堂).
Unmanned helicopter
Green Heaven is a cooperative that produces and markets fruits and vegetables that are not genetically engineered and not using hormones. However, pesticides are still necessary, and it was discovered that it is very inefficient to spray the plants manually, so a more efficient method was needed. The cooperative discovered that the most cost effective method of applying pesticide is crop dusting by UAVs, and as a result, it developed its own unmanned helicopter to meet the crop dusting need. Being an agricultural produce grower and distributor without any previous aeronautic experience, the cooperative selects a prudent approach by utilizing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) subsystems such as airframe, autopilot, and flight control system (FCS) that are already available on the market, and integrating them together. The result is a 5 kg class unmanned helicopter proved to successful, and the same approach is adopted again for a larger version, the 10 kg class unmanned helicopter, which also proved to be successful.