Hybrid airship-drone farm robot system for crop dusting, planting, fertilizing and other field jobs

A method of automated farming where a fleet of two or more hybrid airship-drones, each of which has lift provided both by a container containing a buoyant gas and by one or more propellers powered by one or more electric motors, where the method includes at least the operations of:

• accepting from a farmer a service order to carry out a farming task on a field or on plants being farmed,
• using a control system, creating and maintaining a map of the field and plants being farmed, using the map to transform the service order into individual assignments for the fleet of two or more hybrid airship-drones to perform on all or part of the field or for one or more of the plants being farmed,
• using a reservoir on at least one hybrid airship-drone in the fleet to hold farm inputs,
• monitoring the amount of the farm inputs remaining in the reservoir and automatically refilling the reservoir when it becomes empty,
• tracking each of the two or more hybrid airship-drones to obtain its coordinates;
• using the coordinates to automatically plot individual assignments for each of the two or more hybrid airship-drones and then directing each of them to proceed along individual paths to individual points in the field and to perform a farming task beginning at those points,
• using a toolset on at least one hybrid airship-drone in the fleet to deliver the farm inputs or to perform other farming tasks,
• monitoring the amount of power remaining on the two or more hybrid airship-drones and automatically providing additional power to each hybrid airship-drone when power becomes too low,
• controlling traffic as the two or more hybrid airship-drones travel so they avoid colliding with people or other things, and
• directing the two or more hybrid airship-drones to a home base for automatic parking or storage when no longer needed.