Smart Agriculture Solutions

Modern agricultural producers are leveraging new technology to improve vineyard operations, crop management, and livestock welfare management, as well as automate equipment to improve the cultural practices of agricultural operations. Southwest Research Institute develops smart agriculture solutions with software, data intelligence, perception systems, and sensor fusion, bringing internet of things (IoT) with advanced sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) into agriculture and farming. Our customized solutions range from autonomous robotics to IoT field analysis with machine learning, automated systems, and other AI and farm automation technologies to support growing, cultivating, harvesting, and management.

Digital Farming with Smart Agriculture Tools

The advanced machine learning technology SwRI develops for automation on off-road, unstructured environments, and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are being applied to digital farming for smart agriculture. SwRI researches and develops cutting edge sensing and automation for smart agriculture operations that support forage management, vineyard maintenance, and broad-acreage analysis.

Agriculture sensors characterize, locate, and track hay bales.

Machine vision enables digital farming weed management.

Machine Vision for Agriculture

Sensor-Fused System for Hay Bale Characterization
- Size, orientation, GPS location
- Continuous tracking and localization for geotag applications
Intelligent Surround View Safety Systems (Camera/Lidar)
- Pedestrians, vehicles, field hazards, etc.
- Path tracking/trajectory estimation
- >99.95% accuracy
- Embedded system operation (15 fps @ HD resolution)
- Extreme day/night conditions (under 0.004 lux)
Broad Acreage Row Crop/Weed Management Perception System
- Localize and characterize crop (plant-by-plant)
- Segmentation between crop and weed varieties
Intelligent Environment Modeling
- Real-Time multi-sensor fused 3D geometry maps (Lidars, Cameras, Localization)
- Semantic segmentation of terrain with advanced metrics
- Layered and composite maps (heights, terrains types, object class, confidence, etc.)
- Integration with autonomous systems
Environment Mapping System
- Geo-registered sensor fused tiled maps
- Multiple levels of fidelity

Agriculture Sensors

As the agricultural industry evolves to integrating more advanced sensing technology, SwRI provides innovative solutions for introducing IoT, networks, and machine learning algorithms. Visit Sensing & Perception to learn about sensor fusion.

Related Services

The technology areas below demonstrate how SwRI develops AI, machine learning, and sensing tools for industries spanning smart agriculture and automotive to biomedical and healthcare.