5G Fieldlab makes precision farming more practical

At this moment the procedure mentioned takes at least a whole day, or – more likely – 2 days. The process of ordering a drone flight and the scanning of fields will remain the same in the future. Then comes the uploading of images made by the drone.

With the current wireless connection speeds the camera is producing images 3 times faster than the drone can send them during flight. The alternative, sending the images while the pilot is driving from a finished job to the next one, is not practical.

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Drone pilot ready for take-off… The Agrifac sprayer on the left has to wait for a mere 2 hours before the map is ready. – Photos: Galama Media

Spraying advice in the form of a map

In current practice the data ‘harvested’ during the day is being processed in the office at night. Which means: the computer combines countless pictures taken of 1 field and turns them into 1 image. Next this file (directly or through the client) is sent to Akkerweb, where software applications analyse the results and produce a spraying advice in the form of a map. This in turn is being sent through the internet to the contractor, who uploads the map onto the sprayer using a USB stick.

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The drone takes around 1 picture per second. That generates more data than it can send wirelessly during flight.

5G Fieldlab aims to increase the pace

The 5G Fieldlab aims to increase the pace of these applications. After all, spraying – like lots of other agricultural jobs – heavily depends on weather conditions. In such cases as a farmer you want as little time as possible between the decision to hire a drone and the actual spraying.

The time-consuming combining of a huge amount of drone images in order to create a field view can only be done quicker using a faster processing computer. But real improvement can be made using faster wireless data traffic. 5G Fieldlab’s partner KPN (a Dutch telecom company) is developing new mobile technology for that purpose, which will increase uploading speeds from the drone threefold.

During the demonstration the images where not sent at a speed of 30Mbps (4G), but at a speed of 120 Mbps through an experimental KPN network (which is supposed to develop into 5G).

_{In the video underneath Johan Booij from Wageniningen University & Research explains how the scanning and spraying works (in Dutch, text continues underneath video)}

Reduce human actions

Fieldlab 5G work is also working on automatically sending the biomass map to Akkerweb, and afterwards wirelessly transferring the same map to the SIM Card in the GPS system of the Agrifac sprayer. The thought behind this is to reduce human actions to a minimum in order to achieve a smooth workflow. After all, the smoother the process goes, the quicker it will be accepted and used by farmers.

This near-future scenario worked well during the demo. The Agrifac sprayer was able to spray the potato leaf with the right amount of agent needed for each spot, based on the data provided by the drone flight executed only hours before.

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Lot less agent needed

It will be up to arable farmers whether they decide to use this technology. The costs are, at € 17 to € 18 per hectare, higher than when for instance satellite images are being used (€ 2 per hectare). However, because the map is so much more accurate, a lot less agent is needed, which saves costs. The impact on the environment is also a lot less, and that benefits the image of agriculture, the farmer’s conscience and – perhaps – sales opportunities.

_{The video below (in Dutch) explains how KPN is testing its 5G network}