TOWARDS FARMING 5.0: DRONE-ASSISTED MICRO IRRIGATION
WITH ML-ENABLED IoT network

About the Workshop

Although Jordan is the third most water-scarce country in the world, irrigation in agriculture just takes the simple “brute force” approach with excessive and wasteful flooding of crops. There is also no sensing or automation to take into account the unique requirements of different vegetables, soil, land, etc. However, one solution is micro-irrigation. It has two important advantages: (i) saving valuable water resources, and (ii) improving agricultural output by efficiently targeting irrigation to both crops and soil within small geographical areas. Now, unlike indoor micro-irrigation, there are new technical challenges which to be addressed within this project. So, we require real-time wireless sensing of localized soil sensor data (e.g., humidity, etc.) to monitor and control micro irrigation. Rather than building an expensive and complicated wireless sensor network (WSN) in a remote drought region, we propose to employ a small number of low cost, lightweight drones using simple energy-saving backscatter technology to harvest humidity data from energy-efficient soil sensors.

To ensure full coverage, the drones need to be wirelessly interconnected in an ad-hoc networked manner. Higher-level algorithms will ensure that trade-offs between the power, coverage, preferred trajectories and blockages are optimally managed. As either a centralized or distributed solution we require updated sensor readings in real-time to (algorithmically) estimate the best positions for active drones or the optimal landing spots for inactive ones. Such a dynamic topology will keep all parameters monitored/processed within a ground command and control node powered via renewable energy. The drones will be controlled via autopilots and the lack of processing, memory and power resources on board such devices means designing the computationally intensive aspects of the project to run on the green-powered centralized command and control node. This will ensure a fully scalable yet responsive solution to efficient micro-irrigation.

Main Objectives of the project

• To demonstrate the concept of real-time micro-irrigation for farms in dry areas in Jordan using drone-assisted wireless sensor networks that can lead to future patents and commercialization. This can be achieved via developing a full stack platform based on backscatter IoT sensor nodes that are connected to a centralized server across drone-based hubs and gateways.
• To communicate, engage, and promote these results to Jordan’s governmental organizations such as the ministry of water and irrigation and the ministry of agriculture. Both will be particularly concerned with possible future developments and the deployment of this irrigation technology.
• To analyze how this technology will improve agricultural output and provide water stocks, which in turn will result in a business case that attracts public and private investment in the future.