AGRI SENSE

autonomous data collection system for precision farming

Keeping up with the rising food demand of the world's growing population is a big challenge for farmers. The scarcity of resources, coupled with agriculture’s environmental impact, creates a need for more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices. Precision farming is a promising approach that uses location-based data collection on the field for making informed decisions in crop management.

The autonomous data collection system Agri Sense can help farmers with this by mapping out their fields with an intelligent drone, collecting precise physical data of soil and crop with an autonomous rover, and creating location-based data implementation strategies in an intuitive software. Measuring local weather data and monitoring plants also aids farmers in predicting and preventing pests and diseases.

Student Term Project
Team: Indalecio Gaytan
Umeå Institute of Design
Duration: 12 weeks
2023

Contributions:
Ideation
CAD
Rendering + Animation

In collaboration with:

01

PROCESS

Background

By 2030, the global food demand will increase by 50%, which is equivalent of 5.5B tons of food. This means that we will need to produce significantly more, while using the same amount of global resources.

Climate Change

Environmental conditions change drastically, and farmers have to adapt quickly and change their working methods.

• More extreme weather conditions
• Increased resource demand
• New disease outbreaks

Resources

Resources are scarce and expensive, and the effects of climate change make this even more difficult.

• Land scarcity
• Overuse of fertilizer and water
• Rising prices of supplies

Environment

Overusing resources harms the environment, and farmers are held accountable for their environmental impact.

• Soil degradation
• Greenhouse gases
• Waterway pollution

Global Farming Challenges

The main challenges for increasing the production in crop cultivation are dealing with the effects of climate change, using limited resources and reducing environmental impact.

How might we ensure that the future food demand can be met in an environmentally friendly and economically efficient way?

Precision Farming

Precision Farming is a crop cultivation approach that utilizes location-based measurments of field data for making informed decisions for applying resources such as fertilizer and water. This approach reduces the total amount of spent resources while increasing the overall yield. Knowing how much resources are actually needed also reduces environmental impact.

Precision Farming Challenges

Collecting the needed data for implementing precision farming usually requires time-consuming manual work. The labour shortage in the agricultural sector makes it even harder to do the necessary measurement in a consistent, thorough way, and as a result, the quantity and quality of the data varies greatly. Interpreting the data in the right way needs operators with profound knowledge of data analysis, and the transition from data collection to the application in the field is often difficult.

The Idea

The main idea was to develop an autonomous solution that would help with practising precision farming without creating additional work for the farmers. It should do this by continuously collecting data from the ground and from the air to feed an intelligent data analysis software that would provide the farmer with valuable insights and well-planned strategies. The focus of the system should lie on taking preventive measures, leaving the implementation tasks for other, specialized machines.

Exploration

In the desktop research we defined what parameters should be measured, and what technical approaches would be the most suitable.  Creating 1:1 cardboard mock-ups helped us to define size, proportion and functionality of the different elements.

Refinement

Based on the mock-ups and sketches, we proceeded to creating a range of design variants in 3D.

02

FINAL DESIGN

Agri Sense

The autonomous data collection system Agri Sense can help farmers with practising precision farming by mapping out their fields with an intelligent drone, collecting precise physical data of soil and crop with an autonomous rover, and creating location-based data implementation strategies in an intuitive software. Measuring local weather data and monitoring plants also aids farmers in predicting and preventing pests and diseases.

This is what it could be like in 2030:

Package

The rover's components are arranged in a way that keeps the overall shape slim and the center of gravity low, while still enabling it to go over crops up to 1.8 metres height. The soil analysis tools are located in the bottom center to dissipate the forces from pushing sensors into the soil. The batteries are well accessible from the side of the rover for automatic battery swapping. The endeffector module houses different crop analysis tools, and can be accessed by the robotic arm. In comfortable height for the farmer there is a protected control screen and a simple interface. Behind that, there is the opportunity to place an upgradable module for adding function to the rover (e.g. physical sample storage).

Main Movements

All crop fields are different and pose a challenge for any transport; the slim architecture and the flexible steering system enables the Rover to maneuver through dense fields effortlessly and without harming the soil or the crop. One of the most important movements is the width adjustment. This feature enables the rover to adjust its track width so it can move through differently spaced crop rows. This feature is enabled through the same linear drive that moves the robotic arm.

Field Mapping

The drone can quickly fly over the fields and map them out. It can estimate certain crop data like nutrition using multispectral imaging , and it then divides the field into sections based on the collected data. The drone can be automatically charged and stored in a drone hub that can be attached to the station.

Soil Analysis

A hydraulic piston located in the main body of the rover can switch between a range of sensor probes, a soil sampler, a compaction tester and a spectrophotometer to analyze different soil properties and take samples. The rover can be equipped with an additional module for automatically storing and labeling physical soil samples for the analysis in a laboratory.

Crop Analysis

The crop parameters like nutrition and overall yield performance are measured by AI-enhanced cameras and the robotic arm. It's doing this using multispectral cameras located on the inside of the rover's structure. In case of detected irregularities, the robotic arm can choose between different end-effectors to examine the plant more in detail: a macro-camera, a nutrient tester and a sample-taker. The end-effectors are stored in a protected storage module and sealed by rubber gaskets.

Station

The station serves as a modular hub for automatically charging and swapping the batteries of the rover and the drone. The weather module of the station helps with predicting diseases, since the spreading of them is usually also dependend on weather.

Desktop Application

By continuously measuring the soil quality and the crop health, farmers can get valuable, precise information about their fields and the crop in the Agri Sense software. The software has extensive information about the majority of crops and helps the farmer to the develop and deploy the right strategies to improve yields and reduce costs and environmental impact. The farmer can also train the software with his own special knowledge and improve the functionality of the system. This also helps to pass on knowledge to future generations of farmers.

Mobile Application

In case the rover finds infected plants, the farmer is notified immediately and he can choose to look right through the rover's cameras on his phone to assess the situation. If it looks like an infection, the farmer can tell the rover to map the surrounding area in detail so he can see how far the infection spread. Once he has this information, he can precisely treat the sick plants while keeping the rest of the crop safe.