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Robot ou humain ?

Crop spraying

Ground rig or crop duster (custom hire) vs Spray drone (hire, or buy and fly)

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an17 400 $USGround rig (custom hire)
Robot · Par an22 121 $USBuy a spray drone and fly it
Délai de retour sur investissement62 mois
Année de basculeaprès 2035 (2031–après 2035)Base-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers people are clearly cheaper. The robot would sit idle most of the time; it pays off at higher volume or longer hours. Payback is longer than three years, which is longer than many robot contracts and some robot companies.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Charge de travail
Hypothèse

Acres sprayed per year (all passes).

Hypothèse

Flying hours per spray day.

Hypothèse

Spray days per month, averaged.

Hypothèse

Volume is annual.

Personnel
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 45-2091.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Prix
extension.iastate.edu

Iowa 2025 average custom rate, self-propelled ground broadcast spraying ($5-$15).

extension.iastate.edu

Iowa 2025 average custom aerial application ($9-$16).

American Spray Drone Coalition

US average custom drone spray rate, 2025 (down from $21 in 2024).

Robot
Hypothèse

Acres per drone-hour in practice, including refills and moves. Spec sheets quote more.

Southeast Drone Solutions (dealer)

DJI Agras T50 spray-ready package (aircraft alone from $19,999).

Hypothèse

Extra batteries, generator, mixing trailer, certification (FAA Part 137 in the US) and insurance.

Hypothèse

Yearly repairs and battery replacement, share of price.

Hypothèse

Useful life in years.

Hypothèse

Share of spray hours flyable (wind, rain).

Hypothèse

Work lost to faults.

Hypothèse

Acres a drone cannot do well (very large flat fields at high volume rates).

Hypothèse

Crew minutes per drone-hour: pilot plus a mixer/visual observer.

Hypothèse

Generator or grid energy per drone-hour (kWh).

Hypothèse

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finances
Hypothèse

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Hypothèse

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Hypothèse

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (acre)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Ground rig (custom hire) Référence 1 450 $US17 400 $US8,70 $US— — — —
Humain Crop duster (custom hire) 1 975 $US23 700 $US11,85 $US— jamais — -27 192 $US
Robot Drone spraying service 2 131 $US25 570 $US12,78 $US— jamais — -33 565 $US
Robot Buy a spray drone and fly it 1 843 $US22 121 $US11,06 $US43 500 $US 62 mois 16 %
Utilisation 11 %
 -14 154 $US

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a spray drone and fly it5-year NPV vs baseline: Buy a spray drone and fly itWorkloadlow value: 300 → -56 087 $UShigh value: 10000 → 183 176 $USGround riglow value: 5 → -43 587 $UShigh value: 15 → 35 961 $USRobot purchase pricelow value: 19999 → 4 644 $UShigh value: 40000 → -28 048 $USRobot output per hourlow value: 12 → -35 685 $UShigh value: 40 → -6 701 $USUseful life or contractlow value: 3 → -24 864 $UShigh value: 6 → -3 590 $USIntegration and setuplow value: 5000 → -7 154 $UShigh value: 25000 → -27 154 $USMaintenance per yearlow value: 0.05 → -7 681 $UShigh value: 0.2 → -27 100 $USSupervisionlow value: 60 → -4 451 $UShigh value: 180 → -23 857 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0 → -11 558 $UShigh value: 0.3 → -27 136 $US-14 154 $USlow valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/ag-spraying/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/ag-spraying/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US2,50 $US5,00 $US7,50 $US10,00 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / acrescenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/ag-spraying/). Modelled estimate, not…

Année de bascule: après 2035 (2031–après 2035)

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
No crushed crop or soil compaction; operators are near the chemical when mixing, as with any method.
Qualité
Good on small, wet or irregular fields; ground rigs win on huge flat fields at high water volumes.
Flexibilité
Drones fly when fields are too wet for a rig.
Edge cases
Drift, label rates and tank size limit what a drone can apply.
Customer experience
Neighbours notice less noise than a crop duster.
Jobs and redeployment
Creates operator jobs; custom applicators often add drones to their fleets.
Réglementation
US needs FAA Part 107 plus Part 137 and a 44807 exemption for heavy drones, and state pesticide licences; other countries differ.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  1. 2025 Iowa Farm Custom Rate Survey: self-propelled ground broadcast spraying $8.70/acre average; aerial application $11.85/acre average (materials excluded) Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, 2025
  2. 2025 ASDC Impact Survey: US average custom drone spray rate $13/acre (down from $21 in 2024) American Spray Drone Coalition, 2026-01
  3. DJI Agras T50 from $19,999; spray-ready package $31,500 Southeast Drone Solutions (dealer), 2026-10 · vendor
  4. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  5. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  6. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  7. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  8. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  9. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  10. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  11. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  12. Outsourced drone spraying in Brazil: BRL 60-150 per hectare Planon Ambiental, 2026-10 · vendor
  13. Drone fumigation in Mexico: MXN 300-800 per hectare, application only EAVision México, 2026-10 · vendor
  14. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  15. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  16. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013