Researchers from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, will be using technology in an initiative, which may possibly be a world first in agriculture.
According to a recent press release, they will use popular gaming platforms, sensor technologies and next-generation data interaction techniques to help prawn farmers make decisions in a bid to boost productivity.
Water conditions in prawn ponds can quickly change from healthy to threatening in a matter of hours.
However, current methods for monitoring water quality are labour intensive and cause significant delays between the measurements and being able to see important trends in the data.
Benefits of Augmented Reality and Sensor Technology in Agriculture
- The technology developed by CSIRO will give farmers near real-time understanding of key water quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen and pH levels.
- This will be done by using state-of-the-art wearable and hands-free technologies that they use while they are walking around and managing the ponds.
- According to the researchers, the prawn farmers have told them that what they really farm is water quality, and not prawns.
- The technology can provide them with the information they need in order to better manage animal health and feed inputs.
- In addition, this will give them the capability to share the visuals in real-time with managers in the office or external experts for fast input.
About the Augmented Reality and Sensor Technology in Agriculture
- The technology draws on CSIRO’s domain expertise in agriculture and the capabilities of its data and digital specialist arm, Data61.
- It was developed by CSIRO’s Digiscape Future Science Platform and uses the power of Data61’s Senaps platform, which helps businesses connect data in a range of different formats, integrate complex analytics and turn it into useful intelligence that can make a difference.
- A prawn farm operator in Ayr, near Townsville in northern Queensland, is working with CSIRO to provide real-world conditions for testing the system.
- Augmented reality (AR) in the aquaculture industry, according to the Environmental Manager, has the potential to transform productivity in the industry.
- It could be a huge game-changer for the industry as it could make water quality monitoring so much quicker and easier.
- Moreover, it will all be in real-time and would bring a visual aspect of data display to efficiently make more accurate management decisions.
- The technology could produce huge productivity improvements to the farm.
- CSIRO has chosen prawn farming as the first agricultural industry to test this technology, with a view to expanding into other sectors shortly.
- They explained that this technology can become a normal part of farm operations no matter what kind of farm it is as all types of farming become more reliant on gathering and understanding data from sensor technologies.