With artificial intelligence finding use in a host of business verticals, it comes as no surprise it will now find use in the agricultural sector. A research initiative of a team of scientist has led to the development of an AI system that enables processing photographs from autonomous greenhouses, automating the cultivation process, and monitoring plant growth.
The findings of the study is published in the journal IEEE sensors.
In fact, today, modern technology is an integral part of almost all areas of human functioning on this planet. Meanwhile, reaching out to other planets is a new challenge mankind is grappling with. For example, for Mars space crews and settlers, greenhouses are likely to be the only source of fresh food. Therefore, development of AI and computer-vision-based technologies becomes a priority research objective.
In order to facilitate this, a test site is already in place for developing and testing advanced life support systems. The test site is located at the Antarctic Neumayer Station 111 near the South Pole, wherein an autonomous plant is at operations. With this facility, scientists are focusing on to create an AI system that could gather information about all the factors pertaining to plant growth, including seedling health. The control of greenhouses without human involvement is another area of focus of this research.
“From a practical point, continuous communication with the test site is not possible, and it requires too many resources for training computer vision models. Therefore, the research team had to find a way for streaming some plant images to external servers for data processing and analysis,” explains one of the researchers at Skoltech.
