LAS VEGAS (DTN) -- Arthur Erickson believes nearly every American farm could benefit from at least one drone, and the Houston-based CEO is positioning his 11-year-old company, Hylio, to fill the gap left by banned Chinese competitors in a market he estimates at 10,000 to 15,000 agricultural spray drones per year.

Hylio designs, manufactures and sells drones, not only for agriculture, its primary business, but also for industrial markets and defense. Hylio's product lineup includes the Pegasus with 25 pounds of payload capacity (mounting a 2 1/2-gallon tank), the Ares with 110 pounds of payload (13-gallon tank) and the Atlas, which can lift 250 pounds of product (30-gallon tank).

Hylio also sells a sensor drone called the Photon. The Photon weighs under 10 pounds. It has a high-resolution RGB imagery and thermal sensor mounted on the front gimbal. Photon has space for a second gimbal in the middle of the airframe. That is space that can be used to mount any sort of third-party sensor -- such as a hyperspectral camera (captures detailed light information) or LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging; creates 3D images of objects) -- and others.

"It's customizable for our agricultural customers to do agronomic analysis," Erickson said. "So, scouting your fields, you could do stand counts for population. You could identify problem areas, such as weeds and nutrient deficiencies."

Erickson, Hylio's CEO and company co-founder, earned his degree in aerospace engineering at University of Texas, Austin.

"I come from the aerospace side, the drone side," Erickson said. "I didn't grow up on a farm. I don't have a farm myself. I learned everything about farming that I know from talking to farmers. We have (many) ag tech engineers that work for our company, and for most of my adult life, I've worked with and sold to farmers. I'm decently versed in their problems."

Here is DTN/Progressive Farmer's conversation with Erickson at the CES in Las Vegas. It has been edited for clarity.

DTN/Progressive Farmer: How do you market these drone packages?

Arthur Erickson: We sell these as turnkey solutions; selling the hardware, the drone itself, with the software that goes along with it. We have sold to all sorts of producers, small and all the way up to big corporate farms, so tens of thousands of acres. The cool thing about the drones is they're modular and scalable. If you have a smaller ranch or farm, you buy one drone. If you pick up more land, you can buy more drones, employ them as a swarm.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: What about cost?

Erickson: They start at about $10,000 and up (depending) on accessories. The big payload (drones) are about $45,000, all in, for the Aries. This is a kit. You're getting enough batteries, chargers, lifetime access to the software, license to the software. So, basically, everything you need to fly this thing all day. Our bigger drone, the Atlas, is $60,000 to $65,000.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: Compared to planes and helicopters, what's the advantage to your drones?

Erickson: The drones are $45,000; maintenance on an airplane might be $45,000 alone. Drones are much more precise. They run on batteries; you're not paying fuel costs. And, at the end of the day, your product is getting where it needs to go. Instead of doing a broadcast, you're not going out there and spraying a bunch of acres. You can go scout your field. You can identify 10% of your field that actually needs treatment and just spray that 10%.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: Looking at the overall environment for drones in the U.S. and the ban on Chinese-made DJI drones, what's your outlook?

Erickson: The sky's the limit. We started selling these in 2019, and we've always been behind in terms of ability to produce for the demand. I've only seen demand climb precipitously year over year. The U.S. market has the capacity to buy (10,000) to 15,000 spray drones per year. It's going to grow 20%, 30% year over year. People understand that, no, a drone might not replace everything I do, but there's almost no reason not to have at least one or two to supplement my operation. For precision spraying when it is muddy. Fence rows are much easier to spray with a drone versus your tractor or sprayer. I don't see why every single farm couldn't use at least one of these to augment or optimize their operations.

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DTN/Progressive Farmer: So, let's talk specifically about DJI drones. Built in China, new models are now effectively banned from import and sale due to national security concerns.

Erickson: DJI originally was a camera equipment company. Then they moved into camera drones, and then they bought a spray drone company. But their DNA isn't ag drones like it is for us. (DJI) drones were cost effective. There's nothing in the market that matches that. But I'm here to say that we've been competing with DJI. They've been in the market for the 11 years that we've been here, and we were still here for a reason. We compete. We excel at a lot of things. We are very ag specific, and that appeals to the American farmer. Our software is built for ag from the ground up. You need to look at overall ROI of the Hylio drone versus a DJI or another Chinese-made drone, with all our software optimizations, the management of your data. We are based in the U.S., in your time zone, we speak English. All these things give you better long-term value with our product versus DJI. I don't want this to be too sales pitchy -- obviously, it is -- but the point is DJI isn't the only game in town.

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

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