As we begin 2019, it’s
exciting to reflect on all the Internet of Things—IoT—industry changes that
occurred in 2018 and the trends that lay ahead in 2019. Many industries have
been and will continue to be affected by the growth and maturation of
IoT—school campuses will be safer, cars will be smarter, and homes will be
sleeker and more intuitive, and businesses will deliver more value more
efficiently.
Autonomous Tractors
One reason why farms may
be the first adopters of autonomous vehicles (AV) is that there are no pesky
pedestrians or buildings with which the tractors can collide. The acres of open
land provide a low-risk testing environment in which to work out the kinks of
emerging AV technologies.
Autonomous tractors
aren’t just mindless driving robots. They also operate with intelligence to
maximize farming efficiency. For example, built tractors that use path-generating algorithms “[to]
calculate the most efficient area coverage pattern for a field taking into
account the type of task, vehicle, size of implements, number of vehicles in
the field, implement turn radius, and more,” according to their website. And
because these robotic tractors are driverless, they can run 24/7 in theory.
Livestock Monitoring
Commercial farmers aren’t
just harvesting crops; many also manage hundreds or thousands of livestock. And
when your commodity is a living, breathing, moving creature, being able to
monitor everything from the health to the location of your livestock can prove
critical to the enduring success of your business.
Many companies are
developing IoT-enabled livestock management solutions. They’re embedding
connected sensors into livestock wearables in order to monitor heart rate,
blood pressure, respiratory rate, temperature, and even digestion. These
sensors can also track an animal’s location to help find sick animals while
also identifying optimal grazing patterns. The sensors then send data to the
cloud, allowing farmers to identify and address problems in their herds faster
via user interfaces.
Connected Beehives
While many this year were
planting wildflowers to help bolster declining bee populations, one Portuguese
company took a more modern approach to monitor our honey makers. There is a web-based platform with an interface that allows beekeepers to manage their
hives remotely and collect data to assess the health of their bees. The app
even serves as a project management tool by enabling beekeepers to schedule
events and execute tasks to care for their colonies. Moreover, their Smart Hive
package provides you with all of the hardware, e.g. a temperature-regulating
cork for your hives and a hive gate that counts bees as they come and go.
All of this is captured
with the Hive Monitor, which sits amongst the hives and transmits data to the
cloud. The technology not only increases your bees’ chances of survival but
also deters the new problem of hive theft—a threat that has been increasing as
the vital insects’ numbers dwindle.
Precision Farming
Ultimately, all of these
use cases are enveloped by the larger practice of “precision farming” (a.k.a.
“precision agriculture” or just “precision ag”).
Companies are
supporting precision ag with use cases in greenhouse monitoring, in which
wireless sensors are deployed throughout a commercial grower’s industrial
greenhouse. Sensors check and record the greenhouse temperature, allowing the
grower to monitor this data on their sensor map, including custom notifications
if temperature or humidity levels hit specified thresholds.
Precision farming enables
farmers to operate more efficiently (and thus save money) by providing deeper
operational insight and control. Moreover, it keeps the agricultural industry
up to speed on emerging technologies that can have a big impact on the way
farmers do business and provide for an increasingly hungry world.
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