A screenshot of Turf Insight’s web-based mapping platform. (Images courtesy Turf Insight)
A local company that uses drone mapping to help golf courses maintain their properties is extending its reach through a collaboration with a giant of the turf maintenance equipment industry.
Turf Insight, a Richmond-based software company, is teaming with national brand Toro to provide its drone-based mapping system exclusively to golf courses that use Toro’s GeoLink Spray irrigation systems.
The arrangement, which the companies are announcing today, gives Turf Insight an opening to the thousands of golf courses that use Toro’s systems, Turf Insight founder David Hunsucker told BizSense.
Turf Insight serves about 60 courses today, about half of which are Toro users, Hunsucker said. Locally, Turf Insight’s customers include Willow Oaks Country Club, Lakeside Park Club and Kinloch Golf Club.
Hunsucker started Turf Insight four years ago after making connections with golf course operators and designers through his previous business, The Drone Co. RVA, which he launched after nine years with Mapcom Systems, a local mapping software firm serving rural telecom users.
Through those experiences helping users digitize paper records and integrate and consolidate mapping data, Hunsucker said he saw a void of such services for the golf industry, which he made inroads with through his drone piloting and photography business.
David Hunsucker
“As I got more tied in with drones and drone mapping, I did a lot of PGA Tour work,” Hunsucker said. “Through collaborating with them and being fortunate to work with some more aggressive, progressive, technology-based golf courses, we saw the need.”
Turf Insight uses drones to create aerial imagery of golf courses that they then can use, via the company’s web-based mapping platform, to create boundaries for irrigation sprayers. The maps can be adjusted manually to modify target areas based on a course’s evolution and development over time.
Hunsucker said the tech reduces the amount of physical labor and potential human error that can come with managing and setting sprayers manually. Beyond irrigation and maintenance, the data from the mapping can also be used for course construction and renovation projects, as well as daily golf course operations.
Its initial relationship with Toro started in 2019, when Hunsucker said they completed their first test using Toro equipment as part of a Virginia Tech Research Day event. He said the test, which used dyes to spray a VT logo on grounds at Independence Golf Course in Midlothian, served as a proof-of-concept for Turf Insight.
The deal with Toro was formalized in June, but wasn’t announced until this week. It provides Toro customers with exclusive access to Turf Insight’s tech, as well as a 10% discount for its mapping and management services, which Hunsucker said generally run at about $10,000 per year. He said mapping an 18-hole golf course typically takes four to six days.
A drone view of an irrigation sprayer in action.
Beyond irrigation, Hunsucker said the mapping system creates a continuously evolving digital record of a golf course, allowing superintendents to document changes and maintain a fuller understanding of their facilities over time.
He said a goal with the Toro collaboration is to add golf courses that can use their own drones to inform Turf Insight’s tech, reducing the need for his two-person operation to travel and map courses themselves. Speaking from Florida, where he was between mapping two of several courses, Hunsucker said the company can manage the data regardless of whose drones provide the maps.
He said a goal for Toro is to integrate the technology into autonomous mowers and other newer equipment. He said since the companies signed the deal in June, Toro had referred an additional nine courses to Turf Insight.
Of the endorsement from Toro, Hunsucker said, “It’s a huge validation for us.”
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