Hartpury University and College delivered a number of use cases within their own working farm near Gloucester and have hosted a series of events, focused on these applications, to showcase the benefits of adoption to a farming audience.
Their use cases took advantage of the mobile connectivity unit funded by the RSPAWIR. When not on the road, this unit serves the following use cases.
- Asset Monitoring – Using infrared light beams and pulse counters to detect movement and monitor people and machines crossing access points in the farmyard.
- Remote Expert – Using Hands Free VR Headsets connected to the 5G network to deliver training and maintenance support linked to Hartpury’s robotic milking unit and other operational machinery.
- Animal Health – Measuring the temperature and humidity in livestock units.
- Resource Management – Tracking the power and water usage on the farm.
- Soil Health – Tracking nutrient fluxes and using AI to inform decision making around when and where to apply fertiliser.
- Crop and Biodiversity monitoring – Using 5G enabled drones to transmit multi-spectral images identifying species diversity and crop progress.
Furthermore, Hartpury brought all of this data together into a single platform to aid the interpretation and cross fertilisation of the different data streams.