NSF Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag)

确保粮食、能源和水安全是一项巨大的社会挑战。到2050年，美国人口预计将从3.3亿增加到4亿，世界人口将从78亿增加到97亿，这需要全球粮食产量增加70%。目前的农业活动占全球用水量的70%，而能源消耗是农场最大的成本。此外，目前农用化学品的低效使用正在改变地球的生态系统。由于耕地、水和能源资源有限，迫切需要新技术和创新来提高粮食生产的效率。这些挑战为科学家、工程师、从业者和其他利益相关者提供了一个独特的机会，让他们走到一起，开发新的技术和解决方案，如果没有融合的方法，这些技术和解决方案就无法实现。美国国家科学基金会精准农业物联网工程研究中心（IoT4Ag）将宾夕法尼亚大学、普渡大学、加州大学默塞德分校和佛罗里达大学的师生与政府和行业合作伙伴联合起来，建立了农学、农业工程、社会经济学、环境科学等领域的专业知识融合。物理和网络物理系统的科学和工程需要改变农业。该中心的目标是通过提高技术来提高作物产量，同时最大限度地减少能源和水资源的使用以及农业实践对环境的影响，从而确保粮食、能源和水的安全。为了实现这一使命，IoT4Ag将为精准农业创造并转化为实践物联网（IoT）技术，并培训受过良好教育的多元化劳动力，以应对未来几十年粮食、能源和水安全方面的社会重大挑战。IoT4Ag机构位于美国农业生产密集的地区，代表了全国农作物和农业环境的多样性。这些不同地理位置的覆盖范围将确保广泛的作物类型将受益于物联网技术的研究、教育和培训，从而实现农业实践的成功转型，实现可持续和安全的未来。IoT4Ag团队将研究植物和环境变量的复杂系统如何影响作物产量和恢复力。为了完成这一任务，研究人员将专注于开发低成本的传感器技术，以在相关的空间和时间尺度上测量这些变量。为了利用这些传感器和收集的数据，IoT4Ag将开发农业专用通信技术，通过配备在现场规模部署的自主空中和地面机器人将数据从传感器传递到相关农业设备和云。数据驱动的模型将捕捉植物生理学、土壤特性和动态、历史天气趋势和未来预测、管理实践变化以及社会经济趋势，为农民提供智能农业干预和改善结果所需的态势感知。通过研究和开发这些拟议的技术和解决方案，IoT4Ag将通过针对受众的课程和实践课堂、实验室和实地活动，教育包括大学预科生、社区大学生、大学生和农业专业人员在内的多样化劳动力。这些活动将为这些新的劳动力提供强大的科学和工程知识，以实现精准农业解决方案。IoT4Ag将招募、保留和教育不同的参与者，并通过广泛的学生、教师和专业人士社区的参与、参与和凝聚力，创造一种包容的文化。这个充满活力的创新生态系统将把学术界、政府和行业合作伙伴与最终用户农业社区聚集在一起，确保将物联网时代的实践和技术快速转化为商业产品和经济影响。通过上述所有活动，IoT4Ag将使农业转型成为可能，使每一滴水或每一焦耳的能量产出更多的作物，从而为美国实现一个粮食、能源和水安全的未来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Ensuring food, energy, and water security is a societal grand challenge. By 2050, the US population is estimated to grow from 330 million to 400 million, and the world population from 7.8 billion to 9.7 billion, requiring a 70% increase in global food production. Current agricultural practices account for 70% of global water use, and energy use accounts for the largest cost on a farm. Furthermore, the current inefficient use of agrochemicals is altering Earth’s ecosystems. With finite arable land, water, and energy resources, there is a critical need for new technologies and innovations to improve the efficiency of food production. These challenges provide a unique opportunity for scientists, engineers, practitioners, and other stakeholders to come together and develop new technologies and solutions that would not be realized without a convergent approach. The NSF Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag) unites faculty and students from the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, the University of California at Merced, and the University of Florida with government and industry partners, establishing a convergence of expertise in agronomy, agricultural engineering, socio-economics, environmental science, and the science and engineering of physical and cyber-physical systems needed to transform agriculture. The goal of this center is to ensure food, energy, and water security by advancing technology to increase crop production while minimizing the use of energy and water resources and the impact of agricultural practices on the environment. To realize this mission, IoT4Ag will create and translate to practice Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for precision agriculture and train an educated and diverse workforce that will address the societal grand challenge of food, energy, and water security for decades to come. IoT4Ag institutions are located in regions of the United States of intense agricultural production and represent the diversity of both crops and agricultural environments across the country. The coverage of these diverse geographical locations will ensure that a broad range of crop types will benefit from the research, education, and training of IoT4Ag, leading to the successful transformation of agricultural practices for a sustainable and secure future. The IoT4Ag team will investigate how the complex systems of plant and environmental variables affect crop yield and resilience. To accomplish this task, center researchers will focus on the development of low-cost sensor technologies to measure these variables at relevant spatial and temporal scales. To utilize these sensors and the data collected, IoT4Ag will develop agriculture-specific communication technologies that relay data from sensors to both relevant farming equipment and to the cloud by autonomous aerial and ground-based robots equipped to be deployed at field scale. Data-driven models will capture plant physiology, soil properties and dynamics, historical weather trends and future forecasts, management practice variations, and socio-economic trends to provide farmers the situational awareness necessary for smart agricultural intervention and improved outcomes. Through the research and development of these proposed technologies and solutions, IoT4Ag will educate a diverse workforce of pre-college students, community college students, university students, and agriculture professionals through audience-specific lessons and hands-on classroom, laboratory, and field activities. These activities will arm this new workforce with the strong science and engineering knowledge to enable precision agriculture solutions. IoT4Ag will recruit, retain, and educate diverse participants and create a culture of inclusion through engagement, participation, and cohesion of a broad community of students, faculty, and professionals. This vibrant innovation ecosystem will bring together academic, government, and industry partners with the end-user farming community to ensure the rapid translation of IoT4Ag practices and technologies into commercial products and economic impact. Through all of these described activities, IoT4Ag will enable the transformation of agriculture, producing more crops for every drop of water or Joule of energy to realize a food, energy, and water-secure future for the United States.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.