2017 ICT4D Conference

Food requirements are expected to double by 2050 to meet the demands of the world population, but the amount of land fit for agriculture is shrinking. Data-driven techniques, such as precision agriculture, could help meet the increased demand. In this demo, we will present FarmBeats, an agricultural IoT system that uses a combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and wireless sensors to enable data-driven agricultural techniques. In doing so, we develop novel algorithms to maximize the coverage of UAV flights given limited battery power, to combine information from a UAV’s video and ground sensor data, and, finally, to achieve cloud connectivity of the farm’s monitoring system while respecting the harsh bandwidth constraints imposed by the farm’s backhaul link to the Internet.