IoT4Ag launched its collaborative programs across the four NSF ERC pillars of convergent research, engineering workforce development, diversity and culture of inclusion, and innovation ecosystem. IoT4Ag research is creating novel, integrated systems that capture the microclimate and spatially, temporally, and compositionally map heterogeneous stresses for early detection and intervention to better outcomes in agricultural crop production. The Center is working to realize IoT technologies to optimize practices for every plant; from sensors, robotics, and energy and communication devices to data-driven models informed by plant physiology, soil, weather, management practices, and socio-economics. Diverse participant groups have been and continue to be recruited and are being educated through IoT4Ag workforce development and diversity & culture of inclusion programs to have strong science and engineering knowledge to create transformative, socially-just, engineered products and systems. The Center is working to build a workforce able to discover, innovate, translate, and practice precision agriculture solutions. IoT4Ag has established and continues to expand an innovation ecosystem and network with academic, industry, investment, and government partners and the end-user farming community to collaboratively build the future of precision agriculture. IoT4Ag’s research program aims to transform agriculture today and invent integrated systems to realize the farm of the future . IoT4Ag is working to create next-generation IoT sense-communication response technologies and establish engineered integrated systems for precision farming of tree crops and row crops, mainstays of the food supply chain.

The Center’s research is driven by the agricultural-specific use case of IoT, e.g., its scale, the environment, and the socioeconomics. It is pushing the fundamental scientific understanding and bringing together the tools of our disciplines, i.e., the fields of agronomy, agricultural engineering, agricultural economics, environmental science, and of chemistry and chemical engineering, computer science, and electrical, materials, mechanical, and systems engineering. It is propelling us, in partnership with our innovation ecosystem, to create “IoT4Ag breakthrough technologies” in sensors, robotics, and energy and communication devices to inform data-driven models constrained by plant physiology, soil, weather, management practices, and socioeconomics that enable the optimization of farming practices for every plant. Integrated systems engineered from these technologies are being designed to capture the microclimate and spatially, temporally, and compositionally map heterogeneous stresses for early detection and intervention to ensure better outcomes in agricultural crop production. The Center is structured into three thrusts that vertically integrate fundamental knowledge and technology from different disciplines and that are horizontally integrated to achieve next generation engineered systems for agriculture. The “flow” or “wiring” diagram in Fig. 3 portrays the scientist’s or engineer’s depiction of the structure and connectivity of the three thrusts to realize the sense-communication response integrated systems of the farm of the future to realize better outcomes in agricultural crop production. The diagram also shows the structure and connectivity of IoT4Ag thrusts and the requisite convergence of disciplinary expertise. Plant and environmental scientists are exploring the biotic and abiotic variables that affect crop health and are working together with engineers to design and specify sensors that are embedded in the field, to measure these variables from above and below the soil surface. Multi-mode sensors are being co-designed and co-created with energy and communications technologies for the agricultural use case that calls for sensor systems that require zero- or near-zero power, are low cost, can be deployed at large scale, are bio-compatible/biodegradable,hydroponic nft gully and can operate below the soil surface and in/below the canopy. Signals are transmitted at the “edge” to existing farm machinery or to ground and aerial robots, that are being adopted by the farming community.

Robots are being codesigned and equipped with energy and communications technologies to allow autonomous, coordinated multi-robot excursions at the large scale of agricultural fields and to receive and process signals at the edge, directly imaging the field and indirectly imaging sensors from above and below the canopy. A suite of Ag-specific backhaul technologies are investigated to transmit signals to the cloud in the characteristically remote and “unconnected” environments of agricultural fields. Multiple instance, multiple resolution sensor fusion techniques are being developed to unite the spatially, temporally, and compositionally heterogeneous sensor data. Models that are data-driven, and yet constrained by the biophysics of plant physiology, the soil, weather, and management practices are being created to “make the invisible visible” and provide “better data”. These models are being used to build a decision Ag interface, which coming full circle, allows farmers to intelligently manage their fields to ensure crop yield and resiliency in a cost-effective manner. Thrust 1 research is in the design and manufacture of resilient, networked, intelligent sensor-robotic systems that monitor the state of plant and soil health over extended areas. Thrust 1 is addressing fundamental scientific questions to uncover how the complex system of abiotic and biotic variables affect crop yield and resilience, and with this knowledge is designing technologies and systems that will be deployed with the spatial, temporal, and compositional resolution needed to capture the state of the field. Thrust 1 unites faculty research groups from eight departments across all four partner universities with expertise in plant and environmental science and in sensors, robotics, and mapping of agricultural fields. hrust 2 research is in enabling advanced approaches for powering IoT devices and robots in the field and for data communication from heterogeneous platforms of sensors, robots, and farming equipment. Thrust 2 is working to establish the knowledge and technologies specifically needed in agriculture, from powering devices and communicating from below the soil surface to deploying technologies at field scales.

Thrust 2 is composed of faculty groups from four departments and three of our universities with expertise in IoT sensor and robotic power and in edge and backhaul communication. Thrust 3 research is in building and deploying smart response systems that are driven by machine learning and decision-based models for precision agriculture. Thrust 3 is creating techniques to manage uncertainty and fuse the spatially, temporally, and compositionally heterogeneous data from the field to collect not just more, but better data. The thrust is building models, constrained by the biophysics of plants in agricultural fields, to establish a decision-Ag interface for growers to intelligently manage their fields in a cost-effective manner. Thrust 3 is brings together faculty groups from seven departments and our four universities with expertise in machine learning and sensor fusion and in controls and decision agriculture architectures. Fig. 4 is a Milestone Chart describing the work of the thrusts to deliver IoT4Ag technologies and to increase their complexity and scale over the lifetime of the Center to realize the two IoT4Ag testbeds, i.e., 1) Integrated Systems for Precision Farming of Row Crops and 2) Integrated Systems for Precision Farming of Tree Crops. In Year 1, 28 multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, multi-thrust research projects vertically integrating the ERC 3-planes of fundamental knowledge, enabling technologies, and integrated systems across three horizontally integrated research thrusts were launched. A number of projects are operating within the IoT4Ag test beds. The fundamental knowledge and enabling technologies are intimately connected. For example, IoT4Ag is working to probe the theoretical limits of electromagnetics, important to understanding signals in the soil, canopy occlusion, and signal interference; to create of a suite of Ag-specific communication technologies that connect sensors located in remote and obstructed agricultural environments to the cloud. The Center is advancing materials properties and processes, e.g., from host guest chemistry to low-cost processable, biodegradable, and biocompatible materials, to realize sensors, that measure variables of interest, and energy devices, that operate in the soil, and allow agricultural field scale measurements. IoT4Ag is developing machine learning approaches to deliver robust predictive models that effectively capture site-to-site variability due to environmental changes and decision science to synthesize Decision Ag interventions that are interpretable, risk-based, and economically feasible. Finally, and coming full circle, IoT4Ag ‘sense communication-response’ technologies are impacting agronomy,aeroponic tower garden system addressing fundamental scientific questions such as understanding how abiotic and biotic variables affect crop yield and resilience. The Center is educating diverse groups of students and professionals to build and practice precision agricultural science, IoT technologies, and systems. IoT4Ag is engaging K-12 and community college students; through exhibits, kits, and lessons/labs with our partner schools, museums, and organizations; high-school students and teachers and community college and undergraduate students in research experiences; PhD and postdoctoral fellows in interdisciplinary research and intraCenter and international exchange; and agricultural professionals and growers through IoT4Ag Ag-extension programs.

IoT4Ag is committed to creating, sustaining, and promoting a diverse community by developing and delivering programs, based on good practices, to create transformative changes in engagement, equity, and inclusion of diverse groups in science and engineering and in the practice of agriculture that creates a lasting sense of belonging for Center members and a positive, productive, collaborative climate. The IoT4Ag ERC provides a platform of disciplinary, institutional, and demographic diversity amongst the core institutions and its partners in research, workforce development, and innovation ecosystem to unite and include diverse groups as they educate each other and work collaboratively to achieve the common goal of realizing food, energy, and water security to benefit society through the development of transformative, socially just engineered products. Diversity & Culture of Inclusion educational programs foster critical reflection about issues that intersect innovation and equity, such as facilitating technological access in underserved communities, ethics in agriculture, data governance, and algorithmic and implicit bias. IoT4Ag research efforts will lead to systems that combine state-of-the-art sensors, robotics, communications, and data science approaches for monitoring the state of a field of crops with high spatial and temporal resolution and making decisions on this data using bio-physically informed models. Even with successful achievement of the IoT4Ag mission to create and translate these precision agriculture technologies and systems, a mission which is necessary to realize the overarching vision of improved crop yields with less water, energy, and fertilizer use as outlined in Section I, it may not be sufficient. Technical and non-technical challenges that are outside the scope of the Center could limit the impact of IoT4Ag technologies and systems and prevent the vision from being achieved. Three primary risks are briefly discussed here. First, the Center will have highest impact if local interventions can be made quickly and cost effectively based on the data and insight provided by IoT4Ag integrated systems. The development of intervention approaches is not within the scope of IoT4Ag’s work, so these technologies must be developed by other researchers and companies. If approaches for local interventions do not advance quickly enough, IoT4Ag systems may have less impact than anticipated. To mitigate this risk, we are creating systems designed to work with both existing and more nascent local interventions. Furthermore, we are continually keeping track of the state of intervention technologies, in part through connections with industry members and end-users in the Center, and will adjust our technology road map based on internal and external advances. Second, IoT4Ag systems are being developed to take advantage of data from multiple sources, this includes our own sensors, commercial sensors and agricultural equipment, and public and private sources. Standards and policies for accessing, sharing, and using data from a number of these sources is quite variable and also evolving as precision agriculture technologies develop. We are working to mitigate this risk by engaging stakeholders, including end-users and agricultural companies, through the Center to understand perceptions and expectations regarding data privacy and accessibility. As we develop decision systems in Thrust 3, issues related to data standards and access are actively being addressed in our projects. Finally, IoT4Ag systems will only have impact if the technologies are adopted by end users. Adoption is not guaranteed even if the systems are engineered to meet performance targets and economic constraints. Adoption will also require education of end users on the benefits and implementation of IoT systems which are different from existing management practices. To mitigate this risk, we are and will engage with members of IoT4Ag’s ASAB and agricultural professionals, including crop consultants, through our research on adoption and our professional education activities as part of our workforce development, to identify routes and broadly disseminate information about IoT4Ag systems. The IoT4Ag logic model for the Center convergent research pillar is shown in Fig. 5. The model highlights the convergence of institutionally, disciplinarily, and demographically diverse IoT4Ag faculty and students from academia with partners in education, government, industry, and the end-user farming community.