A motion precision equipment and automation solution provider, wanted to build an advanced, vison-based, smart farming solution to analyze the growth of plantations inside a greenhouse. After evaluating the available market options, the client selected LTTS (L&T Technology Services Limited) for this project. LTTS has worked on vision solutions that have transformed several of its customers’ businesses. From vision-based packaging systems to complete plant automation, and self-driving cars, LTTS has delivered solutions across industries. LTTS used a tomato plantation as a starting point to build this smart machine vision solution.
The yield in a plantation depends on the type and amount of fertilizer, CO2, humidity, and temperature. The existing process involved a greenhouse manager to manually decide these parameters after checking each plant, flower, and stem. This was a tedious process and lacked accuracy. It was also found that yield can be predicted based on color, angle, direction, width and length of the tomato petal, pistil, and stem. However, this activity cannot be performed manually and needed an automated system.
Identifying minute discoloration and the insects that live around the plantation helps in detecting and mitigating plant diseases at an early stage. However, the process is very labor intensive, and its accuracy is again dependent on the eye of the observer.
LTTS’ engineers conducted a thorough research and understood that the artificial intelligence (AI) solution should capture flower, leaf and other plant features for analysis.