NGI-UAV-AGRO

NGI-UAV-AGRO (“Next Generation Internet based on 5G and UAV for precision agriculture”) project no. 461PED / 2020

Funder: UEFISCDI
Financing program: Increasing the competitiveness of the Romanian economy through RDI
Funding subprogramme: Experimental demonstration project (PED)
Research field: Energy, environment and climate change

Name of the Program from PN III: Program 2 – Increasing the competitiveness of the Romanian economy through research, development and innovation
Name of the Subprogramme: Subprogramme 2.1 – Competitiveness through research, development and innovation
Project type: Experimental – demonstration project
Project title: Next Generation Internet platform based on 5G and UAVs for precision agriculture
The total value of the Contract: 733,036.00 lei
Of which, by sources:
Source 1 – from the state budget: 6000,000.00 lei
Source 2 – from other attracted sources (co-financing): 133,036.00 lei
Contract duration: 24 months

Contracting Authority: Executive Unit for the Financing of Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation
Contractor: POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

The main purpose of the project is to develop and implement a monitoring and prevention platform for precision agriculture, platform designed using the current 5G specifications and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for Smart City and Smart Neighbourhood use-cases. The role of the platform resides in the soil, air and crop monitoring for communities that want to implement urban farming and/or precision agriculture in or close to residential areas, for both safer food production and air quality improvement.  When designing the Next Generation Internet (NGI) platform, the use of dedicated wireless sensor networks is considered, as well as point-to-point 6LoWPAN routing for interconnecting and switching between NGI and the wireless sensor network.  Crops such as vines and tomatoes will be real-time monitored to detect changes in soil and plat parameters in a timely manner, to act on soil irrigation mechanisms, to identify the stages of diseases that occur due to air and water pollution, the application of incorrect amount of pesticides, etc. Data gathered from the sensors and those recorded using UAVs will be stored in Cloud and real-time accessed by the beneficiaries via one of the applications available on the terminal electronic equipment (mobile device, laptop, etc.). Subsequently, through data fusion from sensors, decisions will be considered to prevent and combat plant diseases. Withal, alerts and recommendations will be sent to the beneficiaries on their mobile devices. The features of the NGI platform based on 5G and UAVs consider reconfigurability and scalability, low energy consumption, minimized human interaction and maximum accuracy.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department (AG) outline the importance of precision agriculture in reducing hunger and poverty while safeguarding the natural resource base and the environment addressing a number of challenges that may affect food including: plant and animal pest, disease prevention and response, management and conservation of crops.

Participants

UPB – Project director: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ioana-Manuela Marcu
email: ioana.marcu@upb.ro

BEIA CONSULT – Project manager: Dr. Eng. Cristina-Mihaela Balaceanu
email: cristina.balaceanu@beia.ro

ICT-AGRI

“The overall goal of ICT-AGRI is to strengthen the European research within the area of precision farming and to develop a common European research agenda concerning ICT and robotics in agriculture. ICT-AGRI develops international research calls to pool fragmented human and financial resources over the boundaries of the participating countries, in order to improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of Europe’s research efforts.”

Project website: http://ict-agri.eu/node/1 

Life Green Grapes

“The main objective of LIFE GREEN GRAPES is to improve the anti-parasitic response of vineyards through the use of innovative natural products and to increase the biodiversity associated with vineyards. It aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of predictive crop protection models (such as decision support systems), coupled with agronomic techniques and foliar interventions on vine plants, based on the use of products to increase plant resistance and biocontrol agents. The project will help reduce the amount of chemical fertilisers and pesticides used, in line with the Biocidal Product Regulation. It will thus contribute to the Roadmap for a Resource Efficient Europe and the Circular Economy Action Plan.”

Project website: http://www.lifegreengrapes.eu

SmartAgro Workshop

On the 13th December 2018 will take place the SmartAgro Workshop, at the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunication and Information Technology (University Politehnica of Bucharest).

Project partners will meet in order to share their progress and set new tasks.

Location: Orange Hall, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunication and Information Technology

Date:  December 13th, 2018

Time:  11:00 am

AFarCloud – Aggregate FARming in the CLOUD

 

AFarCloud will provide a distributed platform for autonomous farming that will allow the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency, productivity, animal health, food quality and reduce farm labour costs. In other terms, a novel holistic view of farming and of everything tightly connected with the optimization of production, in order to promote a healthier life-style and reduced labour levels for workers. This platform will be integrated with farm management software and will support monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real time data mining techniques.

The AFarCloud project also aims to make farming robots accessible to more users by enabling farming vehicles to work in a cooperative mesh, thus opening up new applications and ensuring re-uuability, as heterogeneous standard vehicles can combine their capabilities in order to lift farmer revenue and reduce labour costs.

The achievements from AFarCloud will be demonstrated in early laboratory trials, holistic demonstrators (Finland, Spain and Italy), including cropping and livestock management scenarios and local demonstrators (Latvia, Sweden and Czech Republic) in order to test specific functionalities and validate project results in relevant environments located in different European regions.

Papers and Publications

Articole publicate in cadrul SmartAgro 2021 – View PDF

  • Beia presented at the 4th International Water Resources and Wetlands, 5 – 9 September 2018, Tulcea Romania, the article: A predictive model for Danube water level using statistical data analysis , authors: George Suciu, Mihaela Bălănescu, Cristina Mihaela Bălăceanu, Teodora Ușurelu, Victor Suciu, Andrei Vasilescu, Adrian Pasat, Cristiana Istrate, Muneeb Anwar

The conference website:  https://www.limnology.ro/wrw2018/proceedings.html

  • Beia presented at the 11th International Conference Air and Water Components of the Environment , 22 – 24 March 2019, the paper  Monitoring  Solutions  for Smart Agriculture, authors: Cristina BĂLĂCEANU, George SUCIU, Romulus CHEVEREȘAN, Marius DOBREA, Andreea IOSIF, Raluca IOSU, Ioana MARCU

The conference website: http://aerapa.conference.ubbcluj.ro/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Program-CAA-2019.pdf

  • Our company participated in FABULOUS 2019 – 4th EAI International Conference on Future Access Enablers of Ubiquitous and Intelligent Infrastructures on 28-29 March 2019 in Sofia, Bulgaria. BEIA participated with the following papers:

Real-time analysis of weather parameters and Smart Agriculture using IoT” – Ijaz Hussain, George Suciu

Overview of IoT basic platforms for precision agriculture” – I. Marcu, C. Voicu, A.M.D. Dragulinescu, O. Fratu, G. Suciu, C. Balaceanu

Low-power intelligent displaying system with indoor mobile location capability” – Ijaz Hussain, George Suciu

The conference website: http://fabulous-conf.org

  • BEIA Consult presents the paper “A study on Data Accuracy for IoT Measurements of PMs Concentration”  in the 22nd International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS22) on 28-30 May 2019 in Bucharest, Romania. The authors of the paper are: Mihaela Balanescu, Iulia Oprea, George Suciu, Marius-Alexandru, Cristina Balaceanu, Radu-Ioan Ciobanu, Ciprian Dobre

The conference website: https://cscs22.hpc.pub.ro

  • BEIA Consult participated in ECAI Conference 2019 on 27-29 June in Pitesti with a poster about IoT based System for Smart Agriculture
  • Our company participated with a paper in Scientific Challenges & Business Opportunities in Water Management (SciBOWater) on 27 June 2019. The paper was “Telemetry system for Smart Agriculture” by Cristina Balaceanu, Ioana Marcu , George Suciu.
  • BEIA Consult participated in ICEMES Conference on 13-14 June 2019 in Oradea, Romania with the article Efficient IoT system for Precision Agriculture. 
  • The “ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS ON THE VITICULTURE USING ADCON TELEMETRY STATION” paper was published in Journal of Environmental Protection and Ecology 21, No 2, 471–480 (2020) Balaceanu, C., Suciu, G., Balanescu, M., Iosif, A., Dobrea, M., Orza, O., & Marcu, I.
  • The “Agricultural Data Fusion for SmartAgro Telemetry System” was published in ASTES Journal – Ioana Marcu1,*, Ana-Maria Drăgulinescu1, Carmen Florea1, Cristina Bălăceanu2, Marius Alexandru Dobrea2, George Suciu2
    1Telecommunication Department, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 010082, Romania
    2R&D Department, Beia Consult International, Bucharest, 010082, Romania
  • Our company presented the “The use of IoT technology in Smart Viticulture” paper in 2021 23rd International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science (CSCS).

Conference website: http://cscs23.hpc.pub.ro/

Articles in the ISI (Clarivate Analytics) database

  1. I. Marcu, G. Suciu, C. Balaceanu, A. Vulpe, A.M. Dragulinescu, “Arrowhead Technology for Digitalization and Automation Solution: Smart Cities and Smart Agriculture”, SENSORS, Volume: 20, Issue: 5, Article Number: 1464, DOI: 10.3390/s20051464, WOS: 000525271500226, Published: MAR 2020 (IF: 3.031, Q1) (https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/5/1464 )
  2. A.-E. Marcu, G. Suciu, E. Olteanu, D. Miu, A. Drosu, I. Marcu, “IoT System for Forest Monitoring”, 42nd International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP), ISBN: 978-1-7281-1864-2, 629-632, Budapest, Hungary, WOS: 000493442800138, July 2019 (URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8768835 )
  3. G. Suciu, I. Marcu, C. Balaceanu, M. Dobrea, E. Botezat, “Efficient IoT system for Precision Agriculture”, 15th International Conference on Engineering of Modern Electric Systems (EMES), ISBN: 978-1-7281-0773-8, Pages: 173-176 Oradea, Romania, June 2019 WOS:000503434500044 (URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8795102 )

Conferences, events, workshops:

  • BEIA Consult participated in Mediafax Conference about Smart Agriculture on 29 May 2019 in Bucharest, Romania.
  • BEIA participated in the 8th edition of the EUSDR Annual Forum on 27-28 June 2019 in Bucharest, Romania.
  • BEIA Consult participates in “Sustainable Development at the Black Sea” (SUST-BLACK) Conference on 8-9 May 2019 in Bucharest, Romania.
  • BEIA Consult participated in “Making EU land and sea border crossings seamless and secure” event on 24 April 2019.
  • BEIA Consult participated in the High Level Conference on Agricultural Research and Innovation – a basis for the development of European agriculture, rural areas and bioeconomy on 5 April 2019 at the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania.

Related Projects

NGI-UAV-AGRO (“Next Generation Internet based on 5G and UAV for precision agriculture”) project no. 461PED / 2020

Funder: UEFISCDI
Financing program: Increasing the competitiveness of the Romanian economy through RDI
Funding subprogramme: Experimental demonstration project (PED)
Research field: Energy, environment and climate change

Participants

UPB – Project director: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ioana-Manuela Marcu
email: ioana.marcu@upb.ro

BEIA CONSULT – Project manager: Dr. Eng. Cristina-Mihaela Balaceanu
email: cristina.balaceanu@beia.ro

Other projects:

Contact

UPB: Conf.dr.ing. Ioana-Manuela Marcu
Email: ioana.marcu@upb.ro

BEIA: dr.ing.ec. George Suciu
Email: george@beia.ro
dr.ing. Cristina Mihaela Balaceanu E
mail: cristina.balaceanu@beia.ro