Agriculture is facing many challenges, such as the growth in the world population, resource shortages, the increasing demand for energy, dietary changes and the increase in competition on world markets. Traditional agricultural methods are not able to sustain all these changes, so technology comes to the rescue. Precision agriculture (PA), or precision farming, is a modern farming concept which exploits digital techniques to optimize agricultural production processes. In the last years it has entered successfully the market, but, because of the high cost, it has been applied only on very large farms and valuable productions.
The aim of our project is to introduce Precision Farming also in the Italian agriculture context, made of small farms, and in particular focusing on the most exclusive and celebrated production in Italy, wine grapes.
The first part of the project consisted in a preliminary analysis of agriculture and technology: after a worldwide evaluation of the market, the team focused on the Italian panorama. Through surveys and interviews it was possible to understand the difficulties in introducing the technology on the market as well as the needs and expectations of the farmers from PA.
Based on the outcome of this phase, a feasible business model has been developed. In parallel the technological field has been investigated in order to find existing and cheaper tools that can be applied in agriculture and give an added value. A small rover integrated with Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards has been prototyped. Its aim is to run through the rows of wine and thanks to a series of sensors and data image analysis to provide the farmer with useful information on the health of the plants and help him organize future activities.
Principal Academic Tutor
Giambattista Gruosso, Dipartimento di elettronica, informazione e bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano
Academic Tutors
Luca Bascetta, Dipartimento di elettronica, informazione e bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano
Marco Piras, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Ambiente, del Territorio e delle Infrastrutture, Politecnico di Torino
External institution
Azienda Agricola Pecchenino (Dogliani CN)
Team members
Silvia Beggio [Team Controller], Management Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
Chiara Ghio, Ingegneria per l’ambiente e il Territorio, Politecnico di Torino
Martina Rontini, Management Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
Adrian Vladimir Sernaque Chuncho, Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino
Tania Simon, Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano
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