AI Technologies
Anit Vallurupalli
August 23, 2024
How IBM used AI and IoT to revolutionize modern agriculture.
In today’s world, artificial intelligence is a word that holds much significance and is ever-changing and developing. In fact, innovations are growing at a rate to which they can be observed in real time and thus many products and appliances that would make up most of our lives are also being modified by artificial intelligence. One such example would be IoT, or the Internet of Things.
IoT is a network of physical devices that includes vehicles, appliances, and homes that are embedded with software that can help them observe, record, and apply data from occupants. This new technology has spread rapidly, starting from smart devices for everyday home use to ambitious projects designated to “smart cities”, built specifically on the basis of IoT technologies.
Many projects are to be created from IoT and many businesses, such as KORE, Cisco, and Velo3D are developing innovations based directly upon IoT. These companies are creating new appliances and devices that can complement today’s age of data.
This data is collected from smartphones and wearables and can report information on itself and its users. One such operation IoT can help with is developing itself to be functional to high-level tasks such as agriculture and thus contribute to the economy. Surprisingly enough in this day and age where technology is growing in real-time, IBM has made advancements in this sector of agriculture.
IBM's IoT technology has sensors that generate sensor data, which is then transmitted to IBM Bluemix and further conveyed to Node-RED using the MQTT protocol—a standardized set of rules for machine-to-machine communication. Farmers can access this IoT-generated information through a mobile application, presenting them with valuable statistics and parameter data. This convenient interface not only benefits the farmer but also reduces the dependence on additional labor, making indoor agriculture more efficient and accessible.
The IoT System is carried through a system of inter-connected devices through MQTT, IBM Bluemix, and Node-RED. MQTT is the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport is a communication protocol that, in this project, helps facilitate the connections between devices, servers, and applications. Node-RED is created using IBM IoT sensors, and it is a tool that helps wire together hardware devices, online services, and APIs. This process interfaces with IBM Bluemix, IBM’s in-house cloud computing service. In the project , the sensor data was simulated using IBM IoT sensors and NodeRED. All simulated sensor data was then sent to the cloud using IBM Bluemix and transmitted to Node-RED via MQTT.
Then, the data received (Temperature, humidity and light) through Node-RED is tested against optimal parameters, and can be changed to meet optimal conditions. In this case, the main point of research is lettuce growth and the optimal measures for IoT sensors are the following:
Temperature -18.3 degree Celsius to 23 degree Celsius
Humidity - 50% to 70%
Soil pH - 6 to 7
Light intensity - 400 μmol/m2s to 600 μmol/m2s
Machine overheating temperature - over 70 degree Celsius
In these cases, an alarm would be sent to the farmer if these measures would go past the optimals.
A series of steps used to facilitate behaviors in Node-RED
The user application, AgrIndoor, will help facilitate tracking of the indoor farm through sensor alerts and other functions of the IoT. As for the picture below, it shows the alert that were to happen if the machine temperature would exceed the optimal temperature.
Observing Temperature via AgrIndoor
Overall, this new framework and technology has an abundance of potential to further aid the growth of many other crops other than lettuce and to facilitate outdoor farms as well. Because human labor is difficult to manage and presents the threat of mistakes, the AI algorithm and the use of IoT manages to create a more precise measure of farms and thus formulate a greater yield along with higher profits. This “smart farming” is just one of many applications of IoT and AI to create a fully functional instrument that can aid in optimization of natural resources required for agriculture.
“IBM Bluemix Overview.” IBM Documentation, https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/radfws/9.7?topic=SSRTLW_9.7.0/com.ibm.etools.iwd.doc/topics/cbluemixoverview.htm. Accessed 29 Sept. 2023.
What is the internet of things? | IBM. (n.d.). https://www.ibm.com/topics/internet-of-things
IoT based Automated Indoor Agriculture System Using Node-RED and IBM Bluemix. (2021). In Academia.edu (No. 978-1-7281-8501–9). Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Inventive Computation Technologies
