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

中西部枢纽阵列将成为先进网络基础设施研究的共享平台，帮助未来的大小农场以更有效的方式使用土地、水、养分和能源，为世界提供可持续、健康的食品和纤维。枢轴阵列将是一个旋转的、中心枢轴的门架，能够在大片区域(约100英亩)上提供每秒千兆位的自主网络访问，以便数十名研究人员可以控制实验并通过互联网连接接收结果数据。为了经济高效地提供全天候、全天候无需操作员的接入，Pivot阵列基于现代化的中心枢轴式灌溉机架，该机架将升级为高速光纤网络和计算。它将为实验农业传感器、传感器通信、软件定义无线电、机器人设备和具有机器学习能力的处理器提供即插即用连接，以支持分布式计算、嵌入式系统、大型系统控制、网络、信号处理、无线能量传输和无线通信的研究。应用领域包括微型气象学、土壤健康、水文学、作物育种、表型鉴定和种植制度管理。中西部轴心阵列规划赠款的工作重点是在不同利益相关者群体中建立社区，其中包括(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)农业投入和服务提供商；(4)研究农场管理者；以及(5)农民。该项目将满足与传感器和自动化研究相关的需求，这些研究影响到大面积和特种作物种植的方方面面。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，并克服许多瓶颈，这些瓶颈限制了当今农业网络物理系统研究的能力。此外，通过解决数据回传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机和地面飞行器的创新而进行。该仪器的巨大规模和它将自动生成的数据将有助于通过向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攸关方群体提供传感实验及其数据来实现研究的民主化。最后，Pivot阵列可能为Pivot系统极大地扩展传感能力铺平道路，这些系统在美国灌溉面积超过5000万英亩。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力优势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.