Precision Agriculture with Sensors and Technologies

from the Internet of Things

Authors: José B. Camacho, Miguel L. Pardal, Alberto R. Cunha

The Internet of Things promises that common real world objects

with limited capabilities can capture data from the

surrounding environment and share it with the Internet

People Traffic Security Home

We usually assume a urban context, with the needed energy and communication infrastructures

Farm’s management has evolved and today farmers

use Agricultural Production Models

Planeamento Preparaçãoda Produção

Processode Produção

Gestãodos Produtos

Cadeiade Valor

Sementeira Manutenção Colheita ProdutoFinal

Internet of Things Sensors and Technologies allows farmers to have a deeper knowledge about their land

and their crops

Existing solutions are tied with large investment and they are not adapted to

manual labor

Agricultural workforce monitoring system to feed

agricultural production models

Monitor workers locations and activities

using off-the-shelf devices

Smartphone Wearable

GPSAdvantages:

• Absolute coordinates system

• Every point is calculated individually, no error accumulation

Disadvantages:

• High power consumption

• GPS signal is attenuated by tree canopy

• Average error is high (~5-10m) 2 Olive Orchards Tested

Dead Reckoning

X

YZ

Accelerometer

+

Magnetometer

Detect Steps Give Steps a Direction

Inertial Navigation System

Dead ReckoningAdvantages:

• Does not depend on technolgies external to the Smartphone

• Works even close to a tree

Disadvantages:

• Accumulates error over time

• Navigation technology relative to a point (it is needed to be defined an initial point)

Navigation alongsidetrees

• Both technologies showed not to be enough to correctly locate agricultural workers

• We suggest a combination of both

(Dead Reckoning for navigation + GPS to correct error)

Location

Activity DetectionClassify worker activities during labor day

using Machine Learning algorithms:

BayesNet e MultilayerPerceptronfrom Weka library

X

YZ

+ +

Accelerometer Magnetometer Gyroscope

Activity DetectionActivities to Monitor:• Walk Forwards

• Walk Backwards

• Run

• Harvest fruit

• Plow

90% correctly classified agricultural related activities

Future Work

With the results from this study, create a system to help farmers with decision making, enabling them to have a deeper, richer knowledge about their farms

Dead Reckoning

Olival Intensivo

Olival Tradicional