The project AGRARSENSE grows an understanding of how to solve issues of food security. Studio SDIS participated in an integration workshop in Lower Austria and a meeting in Finland to drive these efforts forward. 

AGRARSENSE, “Smart, digitalized components and systems for data-based Agriculture and Forestry” is a Horizon Europe project that tackles an array of problems of our time: Climate change, supply chain issues and labour shortages all threaten food security. Through a joint Undertaking, the AGRARSENSE consortium of 57 partners plans to take agricultural technology and productivity to the next level.  

Vertical Farms can be one solution for these issues. But with this new technology new challenges arise, something that Use Case 2 “Vertical Farming” tackles by looking at the industrial production of plants with medicinal value. The goal of the Use Case-Team is to increase efficiency through scalability while at the same time increasing product quality. It consists of the lead Smart Greenery, Research Studios Austria Studio SDIS, Micro Fluidic Chips Shop, Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), CISC Semiconductor, and Soil Scout). 

The consortium met for their second in-person meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, hosted by the Lapland University of Applied Sciences. They discussed the projects’ objectives, progress in the project as well as next steps and new ideas. From studio SDIS, the researchers Christian Hirsch and Michael Boch made the journey to Finland and present their part. 

The objectives of Use Case 2 are 

  • Reducing fertilizer, water and CO2 usage. 
  • Minimizing growing process losses to under 1%. 
  • Achieving energy savings up to 30%. 
  • Cutting lightning power savings by up to 30 percent 

Especially in a vertical farm, a single incorrect parameter or an undetected malfunction can destroy an entire crop cycle.  An equally important requirement is maximum operational efficiency, concerning energy, water and fertilizer usage. With energy costs for growing lights as a main cost driver, optimizing energy flow and recovery between interconnected modules offers an additional opportunity to lower production costs. 

To achieve this, RSA FG is implementing an autonomous MAPE-K control loop (Monitor, Analyze, Plan, Execute, and Knowledge). This framework consists of the following components:  

  • Monitor: Sensors collecting data on environmental parameters such as light, temperature, humidity, and energy consumption. 
  • Analyze: Machine learning models analyze sensor data to identify trends. 
  • Plan: Based on the analysis, the system develops strategies, such as adjusting lighting times or give more water to the plants. 
  • Execute: Applying the planned actions. 
  • Knowledge: The system saves historical and real-time data to refine the ML algorithms. 

The second research topic of the SDIS-team in the project is scalability. RSA FG is using edge computing, IoT, next to the machine learning algorithms to create a flexible and scalable production infrastructure. 

Integrating sensors in Breitenfurt 

Before the meeting in Finland, the UC2 partners met for an integration workshop at Smart Greenery’s test farm in Breitenfurt, Lower Austria. During the workshop, they successfully integrated all sensors at the use case lead’s test farm. These test farms produce plants for medicinal and cosmetic uses. Growing these plants in a controlled environment not only guarantees product quality but also aims to reduce production costs. The AGRARSENSE Use Case seeks to optimize this process and will continue until the project concludes in 2025. The next steps will be security assessments, and after the integration workshop the SDIS team at RSA FG can gather all the data and information required to start training their machine learning models.