Just south of Fresno California in the small town of Kingsburg, Crinklaw Farm Services is building what looks like the future of the agriculture industry. The team there has been working for just over three years perfecting their newest invention that they believe will add much needed safety to the spraying process of orchards. The have created what they are now calling GUSS short for Global Unmanned Spray System. GUSS is a completely autonomous sprayer designed for the orchard setting to remove the human from the close proximity of the sprayer. Crinklaw Farm Services custom sprays orchards in the area and is now adding this new machine to the lineup.

The machine is trailered to the orchard, and unloaded using a remote control, once the machine is in place and filled with water and chemicals it is ready to go. From that point, it is only a matter of monitoring the performance of GUSS. Performance monitoring is done from a van they have outfitted to monitor systems such as fan speed, flowrates, and a myriad of other items on the machine.

When GUSS sprays out all the onboard chemicals, it automatically shuts down and waits for the nurse truck to refill the tank, once refilled GUSS continues on.  Crinklaw Farm Services says they expect that one operator should be able to monitor up to 10 GUSS sprayers at one time, significantly reducing the amount of labor needed to spray an orchard. Mr. Gary Thompson says that currently they don’t have plans to sell GUSS to the public, but have already had interest from buyers wanting to add GUSS to their farm. You can find out more about GUSS at the company’s website www.gussag.com