Raptor Maps, which was founded by Forrest Meyen, Eddie Obropta, and Nikhil Vadhavkar, won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition on May 13, 2015. In addition to winning the Robert P. Goldberg Grand Prize, the team also shared the $10,000 Thomson Reuters Data Prize with another team.
RaptorMaps, which beat out seven other finalists, is building “crop-mapping” drones that fly across farmland, collecting multispectral images that, when combined with data analytics, pinpoint damaged crops. White blotches or curved streaks in fields, for instance, may signify damage by insects, weeds, or disease; dark, straight lines may signify healthy crops. That data is pushed to the cloud, where farmers can see areas to care for before pests or disease continue to spread.
See the article on the MIT News page here