CCRI: Planning-M: Midwest Pivot Array for Autonomous Agricultural Sensing at Scale

中西部枢纽阵列将成为一个共享平台，用于先进的网络基础设施研究，帮助未来的大大小小的农场以更有效的方式利用土地、水、养分和能源，为世界提供可持续、健康的食物和纤维。该支点阵列将是一个旋转的中心支点龙门，能够在大范围（约100英亩）内提供每秒千兆比特的自主网络接入，这样数十名研究人员就可以控制实验并通过互联网连接接收结果数据。为了经济有效地提供全天候，24x7x365的无操作访问，Pivot阵列基于现代化的中心-枢纽灌溉龙门，将通过高速光纤网络和计算进行升级。它将为实验性农业传感器、传感器通信、软件定义无线电、机器人设备和机器学习处理器提供即插即用连接，以支持分布式计算、嵌入式系统、大规模系统控制、网络、信号处理、无线电力传输和无线通信等方面的研究。应用包括微气象学、土壤健康、水文学、作物育种、表型和种植系统管理。中西部枢轴阵列规划拨款的工作重点是在不同的利益相关者群体之间建立社区，包括：(1)大学研究人员和学生；(2)网络、计算、无线和农业机械领域的行业合作伙伴；(3)农业投入品和服务提供者；(4)研究农场管理者；(5)农民。该项目将满足与传感和自动化研究相关的需求，这些需求将影响宽英亩和特种作物种植的各个方面。这种可移动枢轴龙门、光纤网络和计算的集成将产生世界上最大的自主农业机器人传感平台，并克服当今限制农业网络物理系统研究能力的许多瓶颈。此外，通过解决数据回程和精确现场访问问题，Pivot阵列将允许传感器系统、信号处理和机器学习的研究独立于自主无人驾驶飞机和地面车辆的创新进行。该仪器的庞大规模及其将自动生成的数据将有助于使传感实验及其数据提供给许多没有资源利用现有技术开展田间规模农业研究的利益相关者团体，从而使研究民主化。最后，枢轴阵列可以为大大扩展枢轴系统的传感能力铺平道路，该系统可以在美国灌溉超过5000万英亩的土地。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。

The Midwest Pivot Array is to be a shared platform for the advanced cyberinfrastructure research needed to help future farms, both large and small, use land, water, nutrients, and energy in more efficient ways to provide sustainable, healthy food and fiber for the world. The Pivot Array will be a rotating, center-pivot gantry able to provide autonomous, gigabit per second networking access over a large area (~100 acres) so that dozens of researchers can control experiments and receive the resulting data over an Internet connection. To cost-effectively provide operator-free access in all weather, 24x7x365, the Pivot Array is based upon a modern center-pivot irrigation gantry which will be upgraded with high-speed fiber networking and computing. It will provide plug-and-play connections for experimental agricultural sensors, sensor communications, software-defined radios, robotic devices, and machine learning-capable processors to support research on distributed computing, embedded systems, control of large-scale systems, networks, signal processing, wireless power transfer, and wireless communications. Applications include micro-meteorology, soil health, hydrology, crop breeding, phenotyping, and cropping systems management. The work of the Midwest Pivot Array planning grant is focused on community building among diverse stakeholder groups, including (1) university researchers and students; (2) industry partners working in networking, computing, wireless, and agricultural machinery; (3) agricultural input and service providers; (4) research farm managers; and (5) farmers. The project will capture the needs related to sensing and automation research that impact all aspects of wide-acre and specialty crop farming. This integration of a movable pivot gantry, fiber networking, and computing will result in the world's largest autonomous agricultural robotic sensing platform and overcome many bottlenecks that limit capacity for agricultural cyber-physical systems research today. In addition, by solving problems of data backhaul and precision field access, the Pivot Array will allow research on sensor systems, signal processing, and machine learning to proceed independently of innovations in autonomous unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. The sheer scale of the instrument and the data it will autonomously generate will help to democratize research by making sensing experiments and their data available to many stakeholder groups that do not have the resources to carry out field-scale agricultural research with present technology. Finally, the Pivot Array could pave the way for vastly expanded sensing capabilities for pivot systems that water more than 50 million acres in 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.