IoT4Ag

It’s estimated that the global population will grow by about one-fourth, to nearly 10 billion people, by 2050, requiring a large increase in the food supply. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) of the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag) aims to help meet that need through precision agriculture — the use of technology to measure and analyze data from the field in order to better manage energy, water and agrochemical inputs, as well as to enhance crop yield and farm profitability.

Current methods for monitoring crop conditions are manual, labor-intensive and costly. While the concept of precision agriculture has been around for more than three decades, information technology now provides an opportunity to fulfill the urgent need for new physical and cyber-physical systems that can sense and respond to multiple variables in the field with higher resolution, increased specificity, greater speed, and enhanced autonomy.

The NSF launched the multi-university IoT4Ag ERC in 2020 with a five-year, $26 million grant. The center’s mission is to create and translate into practice IoT technologies for precision agriculture — as well as train and educate a diverse workforce that will address the societal grand challenge of food, energy, and water security for decades to come. That requires expertise in agronomy, agricultural engineering, economics, environmental science, and cyber-physical systems across the four IoT4Ag partner institutions, including Purdue University.

In addition to planned research, there is a large outreach effort with thrusts in Workforce Development, Diversity & Inclusion, and Innovation. David J. Cappelleri, Purdue site director for IoT4Ag and associate professor of mechanical engineering, leads the pre-college Engineering Workforce Development thrust, which develops and deploys programs in schools, after-school activities, camps, libraries, and museums. IoT4Ag is also collaborating with local community colleges to help train and potentially transition students with IoT4Ag skills to bachelor’s degree programs.

IoT4Ag envisions the farms of the future using autonomous farm machinery to plant a network of sophisticated biodegradable IoT sensors in the ground. They will deploy aerial and/or ground drones for wireless interrogation of these sensors, pulling data from the field, relaying sensor data between machines, and storing and analyzing it in a central repository. This data will be available throughout the growing season at very fine spatial and time scales to enable specific decisions and precise interventions at optimal times. It is anticipated that this advance will spur dramatic increases in productivity and decreases in resources needed to field a healthy crop.

In its first year, IoT4Ag has achieved significant accomplishments across each of its four pillars — Convergent Research, Workforce Development, Diversity & Culture of Inclusion, and the Innovation Ecosystem. Among highlights, IoT4Ag:

• Developed an institutionally, disciplinarily and demographically diverse membership, consisting of 131 members, including 12 postdocs, 43 PhD students, 7 MS students, and 33 undergraduate students.
• Established 28 research projects, with 23 as collaborative projects with faculty and students from multiple disciplines, 20 projects spanning research thrusts, and 15 projects from multi-institutional partnerships.
• Created the IoT4Ag Virtual Boot Camp during the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters to spur collaboration.
• Established new/modified existing courses for students interested in precision agriculture.
• Hosted the first cohort of IoT4AG’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in Summer 2021.
• Conducted a series of training sessions on implicit bias to raise awareness of one’s own biases and to identify solutions to address discriminatory behavior, along with hosting a virtual screening and panel discussion of the film Coded Bias.
• Offered IoT4Ag’s first Pathway to PhD Program (PPP) this fall to 20-plus participants. PPP is a hands-on, two-day workshop designed to introduce underrepresented undergraduate students to the graduate school admission process.
• Established various advisory boards and attracted 18 industry, government, venture and innovation partners as ERC full members, spanning physical systems, cyber systems, tech transition, government agencies, and end-user business sectors.

IoT4Ag’s near-term goals are to establish integrated sensor-communication-response systems for the farm of the future. Over the next 10 years, the IoT4Ag goal is to pair transformative science and engineering-based integrated systems for precision agriculture with a diverse, well-educated workforce to generate more crop for every drop of water or Joule of energy, assure sustainable agricultural processes, and realize a $47 billion annual increase in U.S. crop market value. IoT4Ag is working to deliver the people and Internet of Things that enable a food-, energy-, and water-secure future.