The problem we’re trying to solve is that 29% of the world is suffering from food scarcity because of the effects of climate change and global warming. Farmers must find alternatives to regular farming, and greenhouse farming has proven to be the best solution. But, the issue is that greenhouse farming is less productive, more expensive, and limited in scalability.
Our solution is to create an AI-powered greenhouse using swarm robotics and Google’s Vertex AI. The swarm robots will record data around the greenhouse using sensors and will monitor the environment 24/7. We will then use AI to analyze the environmental data gathered by the robots to make decisions related to pest control, diseases, and crop yield. We expect this solution to increase harvesting efficiency, yield greater crop output, and improve farming sustainability.
We are using 2 robots, a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Pololu 3pi+. The raspberry Pi is primarily used as a data-gathering bot that takes pictures of plants periodically around the greenhouse and the 3pi+ is used to move the pi and the camera around the greenhouse. Finally, all the pictures are put into Google’s Vertex AI software to collect information and make decisions autonomously. So far we have almost finished programming the robots and are moving into the testing phase with real plants to finalize our programs.