When farm challenges grow, smart tools need to grow with them.
Updated
November 27, 2025 3:26 PM

A drone spraying water over an agricultural field. PHOTO: FREEPIK
Farms today are under pressure. Fields are getting bigger, workers are harder to find and many jobs still rely on long hours of manual labor. XAG’s new P150 Max agricultural drone is designed for exactly this reality. Instead of replacing farmers, it takes over the heavy, repetitive fieldwork that slows them down, making farm operations more efficient and more precise.
The P150 Max is built around one simple idea: a single machine that can handle multiple farming tasks. Most farm drones focus only on spraying or mapping, but this one is fully modular. With a quick switch of attachments, it can spray crops, spread seeds or fertilizer, map fields or transport supplies. This flexibility helps farmers keep up with changing tasks throughout the day without needing different machines, improving both productivity and cost-efficiency.
A key challenge in agriculture is that fields are rarely smooth or predictable. Tractors can get stuck, smaller drones can’t carry much and some areas—like orchards or hilly plots—are simply hard to reach. The P150 Max fills that gap with an 80-kilogram payload and fast flight speed, letting it cover more ground per trip. Fewer takeoffs mean less downtime and more work completed before weather or daylight cuts operations short.
When it’s time to spray, the drone uses a smart spraying system that allows farmers to adjust droplet size based on the crop’s needs. This matters because precise spraying reduces waste and improves targeting. With an output of up to 46 liters per minute, the drone can serve both large open fields and dense orchards where consistent coverage is traditionally difficult.
The spreading system applies the same logic. Instead of dropping seeds or fertilizer unevenly, the vertical mechanism spreads material smoothly and resists wind drift. This ensures uniform application across irregular or hard-to-reach land—an ongoing challenge for modern farms aiming for higher yield and better resource use.
Another everyday issue for farmers is understanding and surveying the land before working on it. The P150 Max helps here with a built-in mapping tool that covers up to 20 hectares per flight and instantly converts the images into detailed maps. With AI detecting obstacles like trees or irrigation lines, the drone can plan safe and efficient autonomous routes, reducing manual planning time.
Beyond spraying and spreading, the drone can transport tools, produce and farm supplies using a sling attachment. This is particularly helpful after heavy rain, when vehicles cannot easily move across muddy or flooded fields.
Under all these functions is XAG’s upgraded flight control system, which provides centimeter-level accuracy even when network signals are weak. Integrated sensors—including 4D radar and a wide-angle camera—help the drone recognize hazards such as poles and wires. Farmers can manage all operations through the XAG One app or a handheld controller, both of which automatically generate the best route based on field shape and terrain.
Since long field days require long operating hours, the fast-charging battery system can recharge in about seven minutes using a dedicated kit. This supports continuous drone use throughout the day with minimal interruptions.
After years of testing, the XAG P150 Max is essentially an effort to make practical, scalable farm automation more accessible. By combining spraying, spreading, mapping and transport into one heavy-duty platform, it offers a way to ease labor shortages while keeping operations efficient and sustainable. Instead of focusing on one task, the drone aims to take over the time-consuming physical work so farmers can focus on decisions, planning and crop management.
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The upgraded CodeFusion Studio 2.0 simplifies how developers design, test and deploy AI on embedded systems.
Updated
November 27, 2025 3:26 PM

Illustration of CodeFusion Studio™ 2.0 showing AI, code and chip icons. PHOTO: ANALOG DEVICES, INC.
Analog Devices (ADI), a global semiconductor company, launched CodeFusion Studio™ 2.0 on November 3, 2025. The new version of its open-source development platform is designed to make it easier and faster for developers to build AI-powered embedded systems that run on ADI’s processors and microcontrollers.
“The next era of embedded intelligence requires removing friction from AI development”, said Rob Oshana, Senior Vice President of the Software and Digital Platforms group at ADI. “CodeFusion Studio 2.0 transforms the developer experience by unifying fragmented AI workflows into a seamless process, empowering developers to leverage the full potential of ADI's cutting-edge products with ease so they can focus on innovating and accelerating time to market”.
The upgraded platform introduces new tools for hardware abstraction, AI integration and automation. These help developers move more easily from early design to deployment.
CodeFusion Studio 2.0 enables complete AI workflows, allowing teams to use their own models and deploy them on everything from low-power edge devices to advanced digital signal processors (DSPs).
Built on Microsoft Visual Studio Code, the new CodeFusion Studio offers built-in checks for model compatibility, along with performance testing and optimization tools that help reduce development time. Building on these capabilities, a new modular framework based on Zephyr OS lets developers test and monitor how AI and machine learning models perform in real time. This gives clearer insight into how each part of a model behaves during operation and helps fine-tune performance across different hardware setups.
Additionally, the CodeFusion Studio System Planner has also been redesigned to handle more device types and complex, multi-core applications. With new built-in diagnostic and debugging features — like integrated memory analysis and visual error tracking — developers can now troubleshoot problems faster and keep their systems running more efficiently.
This launch marks a deeper pivot for ADI. Long known for high-precision analog chips and converters, the company is expanding its edge-AI and software capabilities to enable what it calls Physical Intelligence — systems that can perceive, reason, and act locally.
“Companies that deliver physically aware AI solutions are poised to transform industries and create new, industry-leading opportunities. That's why we're creating an ecosystem that enables developers to optimize, deploy and evaluate AI models seamlessly on ADI hardware, even without physical access to a board”, said Paul Golding, Vice President of Edge AI and Robotics at ADI. “CodeFusion Studio 2.0 is just one step we're taking to deliver Physical Intelligence to our customers, ultimately enabling them to create systems that perceive, reason and act locally, all within the constraints of real-world physics”.