IoT Agriculture: Betting the Farm

When thinking about applications for automation, robots, and connected sensors, their industrial uses immediately come to mind, but taking a closer look at developments in agriculture unearths a number of surprises. There are so many striking examples that could easily fill a whole magazine. Instead, we have picked out some that seem especially stunning.

IoT, the oyster said: Can mollusks save the planet?

Oysters are filter feeders, which means they often absorb contaminants as well as food from their environment, substances that may be harmful to humans. Oyster harvesting is usually controlled by public authorities and collections are suspended temporarily if there is cause for alarm. Rainwater washes contaminants from the land and into the waterways where the oysters grow, so farmers depend heavily on precise meteorological data to determine the right time for harvesting. If the harvest is stopped unnecessarily, it can cost the oyster farmers a great deal of money in lost sales. Just off the Australian island of Tasmania, measuring stations using the Bosch ProSyst IoT platform have been installed in the immediate vicinity of oyster beds. These measure the depth and salinity of the water, as well as temperature and atmospheric pressure.

Algorithms developed by local startup The Yield AgTec Solutions record and analyze the data, allowing farmers to check their computers or smartphones for the ideal time to harvest. Bosch has developed the system in cooperation with The Yield and supplies the hardware, software, and real time data management. As Jesse Reader, a Bosch associate involved in the project, points out, the company’s experience in the automotive industry proved to be of great benefit, since this is all about making sensitive technology function reliably in a harsh environment. It all goes to help the oyster farmers optimize their harvests and become more profitable.

If we want to be able to feed the world’s population in the future without destroying the planet, intelligent agriculture is the only answer.
_{Ros Harvey, founder and managing director of The Yield}

As a result, it is now possible to reduce unnecessary closures by as much as 30%, which could potentially save the Australian oyster industry several millions of dollars a year. In addition, collected information is supplied free of charge to scientific institutions, where it is used to combat the spread of oyster diseases that could spell financial ruin for farmers and their operations. Bosch and The Yield are also teaming up on further applications for smart and more sustainable agriculture, where the focus is on collecting and analyzing microclimatic data.

Counting sheep: Herds may run, but they can’t hide

This summer, Telia Norway launched a first-of-its-kind pilot project where 1,000 sheep were equipped with NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) collars and tracked while on summer pasture. NB-IoT is a new cost-efficient communications technology that enables excellent coverage indoors, outdoors, and in the ground. It is ideal for things that run on battery or which only send data occasionally.

Telia Norway and startup Nortrace have fitted the sheep with the modules to allow farmers to monitor each sheep’s location and state of well-being while they are on summer pasture in Rogaland on the southern tip of Norway. In the old days, at the end of the summer pasture, ten to12 shepherds would go to gather the sheep – and they usually found about 90% of them. The rest could have become lost or got stuck somewhere in the snowy highlands. With the new system, the farmer receives an alarm on his smartphone if an animal has not moved for a long time and may be in distress, and, at the end of summer, there will be no more problems in finding the missing 10%. “This is a great example of how IoT and new technology can help meet real needs,” says Jon Christian Hillestad, the head of enterprise at Telia Norway. “Using NB-IoT for tracking purposes is one of the most important areas of IoT and 5G in the future. It can be used pretty much on everything that is mobile: animals, ships, containers, and other means of transportation.” Telia expects to gain valuable experience from the pilot scheme:

With such a big pilot we will get a pretty good picture of how the technology works and how it can be transferred to other applications.
_{Jon Christian Hillestad, Head of enterprise at Telia Norway}

“NB-IoT opens an immense number of opportunities and, with the use of this technology and our platform, we can now connect multiple devices and develop exciting commercial solutions with partners.” The product, originally called Gjeteren (Shepherd), is being marketed under the Shiip brand and will be available early in 2018 at www.shiip.no. A similar product called Alptracker has been developed in Switzerland for use in the Alps. In the high mountains there is often no access to mobile phone services – and topographic conditions are challenging. Semtech’s long-range LoRa low-power wireless system of interlinked antennae, each covering a radius up to 15 km, locates Alptracker collar transmitters, attached to every animal, via GPS every 30 minutes – with an accuracy down to15 meters. The receiving LoRa antenna transmits the data to a base station via the autonomous network. An Alptracker collar is powered by two AA batteries, allowing continuous deployment of up to 180 days.

A clockwork garden: IoT with a green thumb

Precision farming was high-tech and very expensive when FarmBot creator Rory Aronson had the idea for his solution in 2011. Since then, his company has been working to bring its precision agriculture technology to environmentally conscious individuals at a reasonable price. From February 2017, FarmBot has been shipping its fully automated home gardening set at a price of $2,595.

FarmBot Genesis is a do-it-yourself precision farming kit that almost anyone can use, and the robotic system is constantly being improved by input from an open-source community. Included in the kit is an Arduino Mega 2560 and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B in an unassembled hardware package. Genesis runs on custom-built tracks with a supporting superstructure. The kit also includes open access to the software community’s step-by-step assembly instructions and online software platform which is accessed through a web app that looks a bit like the popular Farmville mobile phone game.

The physical FarmBot system is aligned with the crops, as plotted out in a virtual version on the web app, to allow FarmBot to reliably dispense water, fertilizer, and other resources that will keep the plants healthy and thriving. With its universal tool mount, the system can easily be adapted to do many gardening tasks and, as no delicate sensor technology is needed, FarmBot is much cheaper than industrial precision farming equipment. According to the website, Genesis was “designed to be a flexible FarmBot foundation for experimentation, prototyping, and hacking.” It may sound adventurous – but the demonstration video, at www.farmbot.io, is just amazing. It may not be too long before we see offers like this in our local Ikea.

How to monitor grapes: Putting the squeeze on chemicals
One of the greatest goals of modern agriculture is to reduce the excessive use of chemicals – be it fertilizers, pesticides, or fungicides. Precision agricultural practices can be the most effective way to significantly reduce the negative environmental impact of farming due to over-application, while still producing enough food to satisfy a growing demand. The introduction of advanced sensing capabilities allows monitoring at plant level and spotting problems before they spread.

With the help of farming robots, chemicals can be applied with honeybee precision and be used only when needed in the smallest necessary amount. Each field of agriculture has its own difficulties and those of vineyards are being addressed by the Grape project, an acronym of Ground Robot for vineyArd monitoring and ProtEction. It is a collaboration of Spain’s Eurecat (Technology Center of Catelonia), Italy’s Politecnico di Milano university, and Vitirover, a French company that has already developed a fully autonomous, solarpowered grass mower for vineyards.

The group aims to create the enabling technologies that will provide agricultural service companies and equipment providers with vineyard robots that can increase the cost-effectiveness of their winery products, when compared to traditional practices. The project addresses the biological control market by developing the tools required to execute autonomous vineyard monitoring and farming tasks using unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and thereby reducing environmental impacts caused by traditional chemical control. The robots will be able to navigate on rough and sloped terrains with six degrees of freedom, doing 3D mapping and path planning. They will be able to detect plants and perform health monitoring as they perfect their approach maneuvers and develop precision arm control and manipulation. The project is still developing and a user-friendly interface is being built jointly with the winegrowers. Videos showing prototypes finding their way among the vines are available at www.grape-project.eu.

Mission to MARS: Seeding a planet

The idea of small robots doing fieldwork in swarms was started by Agco/Fendt in 2014 under the name of MARS (Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms). Since then it has been incorporated as a research project supported by the European Union, the first fruit of which is an automated system for the precise seeding of corn, which is now close to shipping.

A MARS system comprises six to 12 Xaver seeding robots which are taken to the field by a special trailer that also serves as a base station. After the robots automatically leave the trailer to do their work, they communicate their progress back through a GSM link. Bad connections can be cushioned by data buffering and redundant communication. The battery-driven Xaver robots each weigh around 50 kg and, as they can work completely autonomously, they are able to seed without breaks 24/7 – even where conventional machines would have to stop due to bad ground conditions.

Compared to a conventional seed drill, energy consumption of this swarm is 70% lower and there is no danger of poisoning the soil by losing fuel or oil. The intelligent management of the robots includes very precise navigation in the field and real-time data collection and documentation in the cloud – down to the precise location and time of seeding for each grain of corn. Should a robot become defective or run out of power, its tasks will automatically be taken over by the rest of the swarm. Future scenarios will allow individual fertilization and protection for each plant. Currently, potential customers can apply to take test runs with the system but it shouldn’t be long until it is available on the open market. Fendt’s goal is to bring the product out at a price that’s no higher than a conventional seeding machine. The company recently claimed that customers from different continents are lining up to try the system after its presentation last fall at the Agritechnica 2017 fair in Hannover. More details can be found at www.fendt. com.

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