Emerging Challenges and Sensor Applications in Agriculture
ABSTRACT
This session will discuss how sensors are playing a pivotal role in revolutionizing the agricultural sector. There are many critical challenges in agriculture in terms of productivity, yield, intelligence, and labor costs. IoT Sensor systems and solutions can enrich these sectors by providing valuable solutions to these challenges. This session will discuss unique challenges and solutions for each of them through different sensor technologies.
Improving Soil/Produce Quality and Yield:
- Precision Irrigation: Temperature, air flow, and pressure sensors can help monitor the state of the soil, air, and crops.
- Fruit/Vegetable Quality Monitoring: Gas sensors can be used to measure the gases emitted by fruits/vegetables to monitor the quality of fruits/vegetables.
- Livestock monitoring: Motion, Ultrasonic, and pressure sensors can be used to track the motion and health of livestock, to improve the overall farm yield.
Reducing Labor costs/solving for labor shortage:
- Autonomous lawnmowers, Tractors, or Harvesters – IMU sensors enable accurate autonomous navigation for efficient soil/crop management without intensive labor needs.
- Drones for Agriculture (IMU, pressure sensors, ultra-sonic sensors) – Multiple sensors are used for flight control, altitude management, range finding, and image stabilization. High-quality images of crops help understand how the crop is evolving.
- Robotics (IMU, pressure sensors, ultra-sonic sensors): It assists in labor-intensive tasks such as Weed removal, crop harvesting, planting seeds, watering, and thinning plants. Sensors can help monitor obstacles, cliff avoidance, navigation, and monitoring arm movements.
Enhancing equipment efficiency:
- Wind power – Tracking any blade deviation to prevent catastrophic incidents
- Solar farms – Tracking battery tilt to disconnect power in case of movement
- A vegetation sprayer - Tracking where the technician has been while using the sprayer.
- Agriculture Equipment Maintenance: Sensors can help study vibration and sound patterns to predict and reduce sudden breakdowns of farming equipment, corrosion, and repairs that could have a major financial impact on smaller farms.
Monitoring climate changes:
- Level of pollutants, particles detection using gas sensors
- Weather monitoring in weather stations using pressure and gas sensors
- Noise pollution monitoring using microphones
BIOGRAPHY
Camilo Delgado is the Director of Product Marketing & Industrial Business at TDK InvenSense, responsible for the vision, strategic direction, and financial performance of the MEMS industrial motion business.
He started his career as a Product Engineer at LG Electronics and has held various and progressively responsible roles managing product groups and business units in the industrial, IoT, passive, and semiconductor segments. He Joined TDK InvenSense in 2021 to develop and grow a new industrial motion business.
Camilo holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from The University of Alabama, and a Master of Liberal Arts in Management from Harvard University.