What if farmers could take a picture of their farm with a cell phone and instantly obtain an estimation of soil quality and productivity of their crops? The idea came from Ricardo Teixeira and Tiago Morais, researchers from the Laboratory of Robotics and Engineering Systems (LARSyS) at Instituto Superior Técnico, and was awarded in the first phase of the “myEUspace”, a competition organised by the EU Agency Space Programme (EUSPA), competition. Innovative ideas were selected during the first phase of the competition, which will now be supported with a view to developing a prototype and validation with customers.
Mobile phones are a vital piece to many professions. In agriculture, however, the mobile phone is not yet a working tool. There are multiple apps that use satellite data to inform farmers about crop production or to optimise irrigation water. Usually, when these apps have a mobile version, they are complex and difficult to understand.
The award-winning idea, called “VirtuaCrop”, will use augmented reality technologies popularised by the “Pokemon Go” game, to provide farmers with real-time information about their farms, such as data on soil organic matter or nutritional status. To this end, the farmer will only have to point the cell phone or take a picture of the specific area. In doing so, machine learning algorithms developed from satellite data are applied, which will provide an estimate. The results are calculated in the cloud and shown on the farmer’s mobile phone display.
The Portuguese award-winning project applied for Version 1: from idea to prototype / client validation, in the “Farming by Satellite” category: technological solutions that manage agricultural production, improve harvests, reduce environmental impact and optimise the supply chain. A total of 4 winning ideas per category were chosen in Phase 1, according to their relevance on innovation, market potential, feasibility, EU spatial relevance and operational capability. The team won a cash prize of 10 thousand euros to support the development of the prototype. The final prize after evaluating the prototypes, phase 2, will be 25 thousand euros and only one team will be awarded in each category.
The prototype will be presented at the end of April and evaluated in the second phase of the competition. “VirtuaCrop” can even be the global winner of the competition in the agriculture category, and collect one of the awards that will be delivered on June 1, in Prague.
Many sectors of the European economy rely on space technology made available by Europe’s Global Navigation Satellite System, Galileo, as well as the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme, Copernicus, which help to better understand how and in what ways our planet is changing, and how it can influence our daily lives. In this context, EUSPA launched the “myEUspace” competition, in order to encourage EU entrepreneurship and business creation, thus promoting the development of innovative solutions, products or services based on space technology.
The aim of the competition is to support the development of innovative commercial solutions, such as mobile applications or hardware-based (robotics) solutions, which benefit from the EU space programmes Galileo and Copernicus.
