Kelly Hills Launches SpraySense: An AI-Powered Platform Revolutionizing Autonomous Crop Protection

During their 2nd Annual Field Day, Kelly Hills announced the launch of SpraySense, a groundbreaking autonomous application intelligence product developed through the company’s innovative accelerator program, The Forge. The inaugural 2025 cohort of The Forge brought together top agricultural and drone technology companies—including Yamaha Precision Agriculture, Pyka, Precision AI, Scanit Technologies, Heinen Brothers Agra Services, and Taranis—to co-develop solutions that address one of farming’s most persistent questions: When is the right time to apply fungicide?

Originally focused on optimizing fungicide application for corn and soybean growers, the collaborative efforts exceeded expectations, resulting in the creation of SpraySense, an end-to-end AI-driven recommendation and application system. The platform synthesizes aerial imagery, weather and environmental conditions, disease risk models, and traditional agronomy to deliver real-time recommendations on whether, when, where, and how to spray.

“We definitely didn’t set out to build a new product, we were trying to solve a timing and location problem,” said Lukas Koch, CEO of Kelly Hills. “But the collaborative chemistry within the first Forge cohort was so strong, and the resulting solution so impactful, that it just made sense to evolve it into a standalone offering.”

SpraySense not only advises growers and ag service providers on optimal spray windows, but also integrates with autonomous flight and spray systems from partners like Pyka and Yamaha. The result is a vertically integrated, automated solution that connects insight with action, ultimately aiming to close the loop between disease pressure and rapid precision response.

The Future of SpraySense

While its debut application targets fungicide optimization, SpraySense is designed as a modular, extensible platform. Kelly Hills has announced plans to adapt the technology to other crop inputs including:

• Fertilizer
• Biologicals
• Herbicides
• Insecticides

These new modules will maintain the same core capability: delivering smart, field-level recommendations backed by real-time data and paired with autonomous execution.

“Though this is just version number one of SpraySense, it represents the future of input application in agriculture by creating a timely, data-driven, and hands-free tech stack for growers and service providers completely agnostic of the application method,” explained Koch. “I’ll be adding soil and digital twin modeling to the package in the near future. This is a leap toward reducing waste, improving yields, and supporting both sustainability and profitability.”