Using Embedded Systems in Agriculture
For thousands of years, farmers have turned to the skies and tracked clouds to determine how a cropping season will turn out. But there is a new cloud on the horizon. Farmers are increasingly taking the help of big data and embedded systems to undertake precision farming.
In these technologically advanced farms, autonomous combines harvest crops with the help of the Global Positioning System. Drones flying overhead, map the field and send the data to the cloud, where it is processed. The farmer gets all this data in a tablet (connected to the internet). He can see the areas in need of his intervention. He make corrections and the data is immediately fed to the choppers and tractors which automatically correct their courses.
This scenario is still rare but more and more farmers have started adopting this revolution brought by information technology. NASA’s Earth Observatory has also noted, we can take measurements of fields in different wavelengths of light to determine when a crop is under stress. These crops can be identified and the correct amount of water and nutrition provided to them, to save the crops. All that the farmer needs for this intervention is a hand held device with WiFi or LTE connectivity. This whole system couldn’t have been possible without embedded technology.
