Vikram Adve and Matt Hudson, Co-Directors

Vision and Overview

What is the Center for Digital Agriculture?

• The Center for Digital Agriculture will serve as a catalyst for collaborative research projects across Engg + Ag disciplines

• Increased global productivity and sustainability requires technical innovations that involve the Center’s initial themes: automation, data, crops and animals, and people in agriculture.

• The Center will also address immediate need for a trained workforce

Launching soon!

COE + ACES Center for Digital Agriculture

• We have $2.1M seed funding, thanks toOffice of the Provost, Investment for GrowthCollege of EngineeringCollege of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

• We have Infrastructure, Finance and Technical supportprovided by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications

Research: Goals• Close collaborations between

COE / ACES researchers• Infrastructure and support to

enable Digital Ag research• New center-scale projects• Conferences to showcase CDA

research leadership

Education & Outreach: Goals• Joint degree programs for a

digitally savvy ag workforce• (With UI Extension) training,

collaboration with rural and farm communities

• Outreach to high-school students about careers in digital ag

COE + ACES Center for Digital AgricultureBroad Goal: Establish Illinois as a world leader in Digital Ag

Industry: Goals• Advisory board for industry

guidance• Research collaborations with

computing + ag industry• Tech transfer, startups• Make Champaign-Chicago

corridor the Silicon Valley of Digital Ag!

Four Themes

Automation Data

Crops andAnimals

People inAgriculture

COE + ACES Center for Digital Agriculture

Automation Data

People inAgriculture

Crops andAnimals

Digital FarmInfrastructure

Digital Ag DataCollaboratory

Four ThematicAreas

Two infrastructure goals

Major Current Infrastructure Goals

1. Digital Farm InfrastructureHighly customizableEnable advanced experimentsExisting + new technologiesGuided by ag, food research goals(I will talk about here)

2. Data Collaboratory at NCSASpace in NCSA if desiredAccess to NCSA compute facilitiesCo-locate researchers with expertsInteract with NCSA projects(Matt presented yesterday)

Focus on collaborative projects in both cases

Digital Farm Infrastructure

IoTA: IoT for AgricultureGoal: Make collaborative experimental projects “easier”

• Initial team: Al Harris, Vikram Adve, Girish Choudhary, Kaiyu Guan, Robin Kravets, Andrew Leakey• Goal: Support sensor-rich experiments in diverse settings and scales:

Row crops – single fieldRow crops – large scaleGreenhouses / urban farming

Large / small animalsGrain silosWatershed

Experiment site

WiFi

Edge Compute: CPU / GPU / FPGA / DNN / …WiFi / TVWS to gateway to cloud

IoTA

Experiment site

WiFi

Edge Compute: CPU / GPU / FPGA / DNN / …WiFi / TVWS to gateway to cloud

IoTA

GPSExperiment site

WiFi

Edge Compute: CPU / GPU / FPGA / DNN / …WiFi / TVWS to gateway to cloud

IoTA

IoTA: Intended Features

Hardware• Support diverse sensors, cameras• Small under-canopy robots• Drones with cameras, other sensors• FarmBeats IoT Hub

• Wireless data transfer from sensors: TV White Space or WiFi

• Solar or battery-operated• Internet gateway

• Edge compute hardware• CPU, GPU, FPGA, DNN accelerator

Software• Edge: High-level prog. environment• Edge: Rich sensor data analysis• Edge: Image processing, object

recognition, machine learning• Edge: Real-time data visualization

• Cloud: Data storage and analysis• Cloud: Machine learning• Cloud: Offline data visualization

Example Deployment

WiFiEdge Compute CPU / FPGA / DNN

Greenhouse:WUE and drought experiment site

Figure: phenotyping C4 crops in a controlled greenhouse with retractable roof to study water use efficiency. Adding overhead cameras, solar radiation sensors, a sensor hub, and advanced edge compute hardware can greatly improve study effectiveness.

IoTA Project Goals

Enable collaborative research experiments• Assist research teams with configuring, installing, using IoTA• Collaborate with Microsoft FarmBeats project• Identify, support, make available novel sensors• Incorporate novel programming technologies• Incorporate data analysis techniques, algorithms

Contact us if interested in using IoTA

Please join us …

We welcome new membersdigitalag.ncsa.Illinois.edu

• Comments and thoughts on the draft White Paper• Apply for the seed funding opportunity (deadline: April 5)• Use Digital Ag Data Collaboratory (see Matt’s talk yesterday)• Use IoTA Digital Farm Infrastructure