ECSEL- prosjekt AFarCloud, Aggregate farming in the cloud

Farming is facing many economic challenges in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness, as well as an increasing labour shortage partly due to depopulation of rural areas. Furthermore, reliable detection, accurate identification and proper quantification of pathogens and other factors affecting both plant and animal health, are critical to be kept under control in order to reduce economic expenditures, trade disruptions and even human health risks. Increased income and saving of time are important factors for agriculture to continue to be an attractive workplace. AFarCloud has developed a distributed platform for autonomous farming that allows the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency and productivity and improve animal health and food quality. The platform is integrated with farm management software and supports monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real time data mining techniques. 60 partners from all over Europe participated in the project. SINTEF and Maritime Robotics were the Norwegian partners. SINTEF was the work package manager for the development of autonomous systems and adaption of existing drones and tractors. Maritime Robotics supported different kinds of drones that can be controlled from the AFarCloud platform. SINTEF and Maritime Robotics jointly developed a drone actuator and a system for autonomous landing on a mobile charging platform. In September 2019, the project arranged a gathering at a farm in Finland. Data from various types of sensors and cameras were collected, analysed, and presented in the platform's visualization tool. In October 2020, the original plan was for the project participants to demonstrate their results on farms in Spain. Due to Covid-19, a two-day online conference with presentations and videos was held instead. Data collection using drones, tractors and unmanned vehicles were demonstrated. The vehicles were checked from, and data presented in the Mission Management Tool (MMT). MMT is the user's interface. Vehicles, drones, and sensors communicate with MMT via the middleware (MW) developed in the project. MW enables easy integration of products from different suppliers. Another application that was demonstrated was data collection from collars on livestock. Data from the collars as well as data from video streams are analysed for animal welfare, and the results are displayed on MMT. In the last year of the project, SW and HW were completed. In October 2021, partners met in Pisa for integration and testing of the latest version of the platform. SINTEF and Maritime Robotics then flew a drone with the newly developed actuator. The actuator can unfold to enable measurements outside a drone's normal working range, such as measuring temperature and humidity near the ground in a field, or near a deployed sensor that shall be calibrated. The actuator is self-powered and communicates with the drone via Bluetooth. Thus, it is easy to assemble and disassemble the actuator and the drone. The actuator was also shown at the Final Review in Pisa in November 2021. Among other demonstrations during the Final Review are precision spraying from ISOBUS compatible tractors, and data collection from smart sensors using drones. Video from autonomous landing of a drone at a mobile charging station was shown. All demonstrations were planned from the AFarCloud Mission Management Tool. The results from various project activities and demonstrations have been documented in project deliverables and uploaded to the EU portal. Dissemination has been an important activity in the project. Many scientific articles and popular science posts have been written. Read more about the project at www.afarcloud.eu and www.facebook.com/AFarCloud/.

Ref D8.4:The expected impact of the AFarCloud project was extensively described in the project proposal, and as the current development of the project is in line with what was planned the main expected impacts of the project remain unchanged. AFarCloud addresses precision farming by joining all players in the supply chains, from farmers to consumers and public bodies. The technological achievements of the project will produce significant innovation in the agricultural sector because AFarCloud will allow farmers an increasing awareness and experience about precision agriculture, while allowing the consumers to have more information about the products and with economic and social benefits. AFarCloud will also bring advantages to the environment by reducing the chemicals and CO2 used in the production chain.

Farming is facing many economic challenges in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness, as well as an increasing labour shortage partly due to depopulation of rural areas. Furthermore, reliable detection, accurate identification and proper quantification of pathogens and other factors affecting both plant and animal health, are critical to be kept under control in order to reduce economic expenditures, trade disruptions and even human health risks. AFarCloud will provide a distributed platform for autonomous farming that will allow the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency, productivity, animal health, food quality and reduce farm labour costs. This platform will be integrated with farm management software and will support monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real time data mining techniques. The AFarCloud project also aims to make farming robots accessible to more users by enabling farming vehicles to work in a cooperative mesh, thus opening up new applications and ensuring re-usability, as heterogeneous standard vehicles can combine their capabilities in order to lift farmer revenue and reduce labour costs. The achievements from AFarCloud will be demonstrated in 3 holistic demonstrators (Finland, Spain and Italy), including cropping and livestock management scenarios and 8 local demonstrators (Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Czech Republic) in order to test specific functionalities and validate project results in relevant environments located in different European regions. AFarCloud outcomes will strengthen partners’ market position boosting their innovation capacity and addressing industrial needs both at EU and international levels. The consortium represents the whole ICT-based farming solutions’ value chain, including all key actors needed for the development, demonstration and future market uptake of the precision farming framework targeted in the project.