AR is an emerging technology which is already being applied to sectors such as Gaming, Culture, Health, Transportation, and Industry. AR could also offer significant support to agricultural producers and farmers to accomplish their every-day tasks as well as train and strategically plan their businesses.
The global population is growing exponentially resulting to a vast increase of the demand, among other resources, for food and agricultural products. Farmers will have to double their production rates. New technologies could aid farmers in achieving their goals. Except for AI, big data, blockchains and IoT, farmers could also use AR to manage growing food demand. Leveraging AR in agriculture can help farmers to reduce crop wastage, increase production, and train other farmers.
The next are key applications of AR in agricultural production:
- Monitoring farms visually. Farmers have to check the fertility of their lands to select the most suitable crop they want to sow in the farm. AR can augment fertility inspection. With AR, farmers can visualize the entire farm in a single dashboard, monitor the overall production quality and detect the presence of any pest or insect infestation.
- Training new farmers. AR can enable new farmers to get familiar with agricultural equipment through immersive e-learning environments. AR will help new farmers to visually learn the use of complex agriculture tools minimizing at the same time serious accidents. It will also facilitate remote collaboration with and training from farmers who are experts in using advanced precision agricultural methods and techniques.
- Facilitating tools assessment. In agricultural production there are multiple tools available to perform single tasks. AR devices can help select optimal tools for a specific task based on the needs and requirements of the farmer and the task itself.
With the cost of AR devices diminishing the use of AR applications in agriculture will surely be augmented in the next years. It is predicted that AR will play an important role in the agricultural production’s value chain.
References:
- Naveen Joshi, Can augmented reality help agriculture grow?, Allerin.com, June, 2020.
- Apurv Nigam; Priyanka Kabra; Pankaj Doke, Augmented Reality in agriculture, 2011 IEEE 7th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob).
- Cupiał, M., Augmented reality in agriculture., V International Scientific Symposium: Farm machinery and process management in sustainable agriculture, Lublin, Poland, 23-24 November 2011 2011 pp.23-24
- Ming Liu, Xiao Li, Xiao Lei, Sheng Wu, Research of Mobile Augmented Reality Technology Applied in Agriculture, Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Advanced Computer Science and Electronics Information (ICACSEI 2013).