IoT and Cloud technologies are going to be applied to farming as well.
ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) made an announcement on the 22nd that it has developed ‘Smart Farming platform’ for greenhouse cultivation that is applied with IoT and Cloud technologies, established a test bed in Cheonnam, and started verifying it along with Easy-Farm, which is a consulting business for information on agricultural food.
They are going to finish verifying their platform on actual farming sites and commercialize it in second half of 2017.
This platform is composed of ‘intelligent cultivation bed’ for early cultivation of crops and ‘management platform’. Cultivation bed is a sensor that remotely collects information such as level of growth and development of roots of crops, temperature, humidity, and sunlight within greenhouses.
Management platform monitors and controls environment within greenhouses. This platform is applied with Cloud virtualization system that reduces operation cost since it does not require separate PCs and comprehensive controllers.
ETRI and Easy-Farm are planning to develop additional comprehensive solutions by utilizing AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Big Data of information from crop cultivation. These solutions will implement qualitative management based on database (DB) by comparing and analyzing data from growth and development management per greenhouse. They are also planning to apply solutions that will recognize variables such as vermin and illnesses of crops to operation systems. If these works take place, it will be possible to implement unmanned cultivation system that minimizes intervention of people to cultivating crops.
ETRI and Easy-Farm have applied LoRa network, which is wireless network that was developed by ETRI, to transmission of data on sensors and controls between devices. This network allows Smart Farming platforms to be used in remote farming areas where there is no internet network.
ETRI is expecting that its Smart Farming platforms will replace Netherland’s greenhouse Smart Farm technologies. Because Netherland’s system is based on glass greenhouse, it is not suitable in South Korea where most greenhouses are vinyl greenhouses.
“We have developed Smart Farm technologies that are suitable for greenhouses in South Korea.” said a head researcher Kim Sae-han of ETRI IoT Platform Laboratory. “We are thinking about entering foreign markets too with differentiated strategies that are based on IoT.”
Staff Reporter Kim, Youngjun | kyj85@etnews.com