Over the last few years, I have been reading and following many articles and news exploring how an automated agricultural industry can prove to be extremely valuable for the growing population of the entire globe. Soon in a few more years, we will be inching closer to reaching a worldwide population of nearly 10 billion. With the growing number of mouths to feed, it also creates a strain on the human resource required to produce X amount of crops and yield to help feed everyone on earth. Though there isn't really a definitive figure or amount (monetary wise) that can fully and accurately depict just how much the fully automated agriculture industry is going to be worth, the other estimated numbers does prove one thing to be true, it is going to a potentially massive industry, and right now, we are only barely scratching the surface of it.

Innovations within Agriculture

It is clear that many people around the world are trying to develop more advanced technologies to help automate some of those processes which were previously managed and carried out by physical human beings. And with innovation, now those workers, in general, can potentially become more productive while relying on technology and innovation to help them oversee a much larger area of a crop field or even the size/group of the poultry animals.

In a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I have learned that there is a team in the US who's trying to develop a drone technology that can monitor crops from the air and also using image recognition to identify crops with problems or areas of crops that require attention. This can be extremely useful because instead of humans need to walk the fields to figure out which set of crops is having problems, the drones will be able to immediately identify the problem and alert the farmers on the particular grid area to attend to. This can help to save a lot of time and money in the long run.

Bringing IoT to Agriculture/Animal Farming

Another area that more farmers are now looking to is having an automated poultry management system, coupled with Artificial Intelligence, the system will be able to perform a majority of the previously human-controlled actions and decisions. Sure, there are no perfect systems. The fact that IoT is still an evolving field, it does prove that there is a lot more potential for what can be explored in the next few years.

Project Showcases with onlinelabseries

With the creation of onlinelabseries, a learning platform & community that aims at providing a more hands-on approach to online education, we will be working closely in a collaboration with a farming business in the Philippines, called Tribu Kaldero, to help bring IoT automation + Artificial Intelligence into the Poultry Farming industry. As part of the joint collaboration, we have agreed to also make use of onlinelabseries' future lab series to help explore, research & showcase some of the interesting farming automation ideas that can be implemented.

The main approach of learning on onlinelabseries is through product applications (or use-cases) as well as creating actual projects with potential real-world impacts. Some of these project ideas, if proved promising, will also be uploaded to Kickstarter as well as Indiegogo to help raise funds, not just for the idea, but also keeping a percentage to help support OLS' efforts as a learning platform & community.

Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, STMicroelectronics, Intel and More

Part of the project idea showcases will also include exploring more than one possible application methods. We can make use of Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, STMicroelectronics or even Intel and other technologies for the idea, figuring out which would actually perform better. And we look forward to showcasing some of those ideas on DesignSpark as well.

With the partnership between DesignSpark & OLS, I also like to invite members from this community to sign up as a member on the learning platform and to help contribute your ideas and suggestions to us regarding the farming automation project. There are no crazy or stupid ideas here, only good ones and those that haven't been proven yet.

Hey, some of the simplest and "stupidest" ideas in the past have already turned out to be million dollar businesses today too. I love to hear from you. So make sure to leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.