Hylio ARES and AgroSol Agricultural Spray Drones

Hylio is an American agricultural drone maker founded in early 2015 by students at the University of Texas at Austin. After working as a custom applicator on about 50,000 acres of sugar cane, corn and rice between 2017 and 2020, it began selling its spray technology as a turnkey system to farmers and applicators in 2020.

Its line-up covers the ARES, ATLAS and PEGASUS spray and spread drones plus the PHOTON scout drone, all designed and manufactured in Texas and NDAA-compliant. The ARES HYL-150 carries a 13 gal spray tank or a 20 gal granular spreader with a swath of up to 40 ft. Missions are planned, flown and reported in the in-house AgroSol ground control software, which can command up to three drones from one ground station via the GroundLink controller. Customers include the USDA, Nutrien, Wilbur-Ellis and King Ranch.

• ARES HYL-150: 13 gal spray tank or 20 gal spreader tank with up to 110 lb solid payload.
• Wide swath: up to 40 ft for both spraying and spreading.
• Swarm control: AgroSol commands up to three UAS per ground station with FAA swarm approval.
• Precise flight: RTK positioning and radar obstacle avoidance in autonomous and manual modes.
• Smart tank sensing: liquid and solid rate control with a 1080p gimbal camera.
• Product range: ATLAS heavy-lift, PEGASUS compact and PHOTON scout drones.

• Sugar companies in the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands spraying and fertilizing large cane plantations.
• Agricultural service cooperatives running multi-drone spraying crews for rice paddies.
• Plantation operators applying granular fertilizer on rubber, coffee or fruit estates.

• High field productivity: ARES treats up to 70 acres per hour of liquid at 2 GPA and up to 120 acres per hour of granules at 20 lbs/acre.
• One operator can run up to three drones from a single ground station, cutting labour per hectare.
• Swappable nozzles, rotary atomizers and spreader let one airframe handle spraying, fertilizing and seeding.
• NDAA-compliant, US-made hardware for buyers with supply-chain or government requirements.

Spray drones are replacing knapsack sprayers and ground rigs on wet or uneven fields such as rice paddies and sugar cane, driven by labour shortages and the need to cut chemical use. Buyers in several markets are also looking for non-Chinese, supply-chain-compliant drone options, and multi-drone operation by a single pilot is becoming a key lever for service providers.

Founded in 2015 at the University of Texas at Austin; manufactures in Richmond, Texas. In March 2024 it became the first company approved by the FAA for single-operator swarm operations of 55-plus-pound agricultural drones. Reports operations in the US, Canada, Central and South America and Ghana; sells through dealers with financing options.