THE POWER OF GREENHOUSES
With the world's population growing rapidly, our ability to produce food quickly and sustainability will become more difficult.
By 2050, we'll need to increase our food production by at least 50% in order to feed just two more billion people.
Greenhouses and indoor farming provide a unique solution to produce fruits and vegetables
faster, safer, and with much less land and water.
BENEFITS OF INDOOR FARMING
WATER EFFICIENCY: Can decrease water usage by as much as 90%
LESS LAND: Can produce the same volume of crops with 1/10 space
SAFER: Requires little to no pesticides or chemicals
In the future, even more greenhouses are needed to produce our food, but we may not have the manpower to build and operate them fast enough. Could advances in technology like IoT and AI be the answer to meet this demand?
We would like to challenge computer scientists and horticultural experts to form multidisciplinary teams to both challenge themselves as well as the state of the art in human-operated greenhouse production in order to make a large step toward the autonomous greenhouse!
Invitational Video from David Wallerstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X-vPFku5a0
THE CHALLENGE
The goal of the challenge is to produce a cucumber crop within 4 months inside a greenhouse remotely! Greenhouse space and controls will be provided by WUR and the teams are allowed to provide their own sensors and cameras.
Each team will be able to extract necessary data from the greenhouse compartment and add their own ICT/models/machine learning algorithms in order to decide on the control settings for the next day or period.
For more information, please feel free to reach out to us directly at
autonomousgreenhouses@wur.nl
24-hour hackathon on Friday 1 June at research location Bleiswijk of Wageningen University & Research, featuring 14 international teams has determined which five teams will continue in this year’s Autonomous Greenhouses Challenge, organized by Wageningen University & Research. The five winning teams – deep_greens, AiCU, The Croperators, Sonoma, and iGrow – will get access to an actual greenhouse in the second half of the year where they will have to remotely grow cucumbers via artificial intelligence (AI) using as little input (such as water, nutrients, and energy) as possible.
Fourteen teams with some 90 members representing 15 nationalities participated in the 24-hour hackathon. Many teams were physically represented at the WUR location in Bleiswijk, while other members were connected to the event online via Skype, phone, and email. Interestingly, the teams actively consulted each other and shared experiences, which contributed to an informal and innovative atmosphere.
The hackathon consisted of two elements:
a team pitch and the
- net yield achieved during the hackathon.
In the end, the jury selected five teams to participate in the next round in which they have to remotely grow cucumbers in a real greenhouse. They are (updated):
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| Deep_greens- a team consisting of AI experts of Intel and horticultural experts of National Autonomous University of Mexico |
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| iGrow- a team consisting of AI experts of Tencent and horticultural experts of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Botanical Society of Heilongjiang Province, Syngenta Seeds and students of Wageningen University |
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| AiCU- a diverse team consisting of AI and horticultural experts and students of Eurotiss, NXP Semiconductors, IGMPR Flower, Parks & More, University of Twente, Wageningen University |
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| Sonoma- a team consisting of AI experts of Microsoft Research and students of Wageningen University and the University of Copenhagen. |
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| The Croperators, a team consisting of professionals of Delphy and AgroEnergy and students of Wageningen University and InHolland. |
In the pitch, the teams had to present their scientific and applied approach to the actual autonomous management of a greenhouse with regards to climate, fertigation, and cultivation. They were marked on their team composition (multidisciplinary, international, various companies/knowledge institutes and other important characteristics as defined by the jury) and their approach (new, functional, robust, scalable, use of AI).
The second part of the pre-selection process involved the hackathon results: the achieved net yield in euros. To participate, the teams were provided with a climate model and a crop growth model for cucumbers developed by WUR scientists to achieve a predetermined goal.
The organizers had ensured that the models contained so many possibilities that it created a game-like situation. It was theoretically feasible, for example, to make a financial profit ten times higher than farmers can currently achieve in practice.
Using their own algorithms, the teams had to determine their own ideal setpoints for temperature, light quantity, CO2 concentration and a number of growth-related parameters, such as plant and stem density and growth period.
OUR JURY
An international jury of experts in the field of horticulture and artificial intelligence will select the winning teams
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| Jaco den Bakker- Cucumber grower from Brielle, Netherlands. Studied Horticulture and Plant Sciences at the Wageningen University |
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| Marco Bressan- Chief Data Scientist in Satellogic where he is bringing together a team of AI experts to build a planet-scale real-time analytics platform |
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| Stefania De Pascale- full professor at the Department of Agricultural Sciences (DAS) in the University of Naples Federico II |
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| Eldert J. van Henten - full professor and head of the Farm Technology Group at Wageningen University since 2005 |
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| Leo Marcelis- full professor Horticulture and Product Physiology at Wageningen University |
In the month Augustus the next phase of the Autonomous Greenhouse growing challenge starts. 5 teams will remotely control a greenhouse compartment with cucumber production. In order to facilitate the data exchange between teams and greenhouse compartments our tech partner LetsGrow.com has developed an interface. The interface will enable a smooth data exchange. It will send sensor information on climate, water, and crop measured in the greenhouse to the teams and receive setpoints calculated by the algorithms of the teams in order to control the greenhouse actuators. The next months you are welcome to follow the teams’ performance in remotely growing cucumbers on this site.
IMPORTANT DATES
All registered teams that meet the criteria will be invited to the pre-challenge Hackathon at the beginning of June to present their team, to show their skills and to pitch their approach to our international jury of experts at WUR in The Netherlands.
The 5 best teams will be selected to participate in the Autonomous Greenhouse Growing Experiment, which starts 1 September – 14 December 2018. The final event will be held in week 50 (December) at WUR.
- 19 March – 30 April: Registration of teams
- Beginning of May: Confirmation of admission of teams, matching incomplete teams
- 31 May/ 1 June: Pre-challenge Hackathon at WUR, The Netherlands, selection of 5 teams for growing challenge
- 1 September – half December: Challenge Autonomous Greenhouse Competition
- Week 50 (December): The Final event at WUR, The Netherlands
SPONSORS
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| TENCENT: Tencent is one of the world's largest Internet and technology companies providing many services including social networks, online games, and e-commerce. |
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| DAVID WALLERSTEIN: David is the Chief eXploration Officer (CXO) of Tencent where he drives the Company's active participation in new and emerging technologies. |
ORIGINAL:
Autonomous Greenhouses (WUR & Tencent)
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