The enhancements will support Grōv’s Olympus Tower Farm to offer real-time data, where high-density nutrient (HDN) animal feed is produced
Grōv and AWS develop machine learning capabilities for Olympus Tower Farm. (Credit: Pixabay/Jatuphon Buraphon.)
Grōv Technologies, a developer of robotic vertical farming technology, has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to instill cloud-based machine learning capabilities into its Sowyer operating system.
The enhancements are expected to enable its Olympus Tower Farm to provide real-time data to ensure that better quality of high-density nutrient (HDN) animal feed is produced. The already tested HDN animal feed has been shown to improve dairy and beef cattle production.
AWS has supported Grōv by helping them identify three primary types of data to be collected for maximising output and quality of the feed including environmental, operational and plant characteristics.
The data points were then analysed and streamed to AWS IoT Core AWS IoT Greengrass, using AWS IoT Rules to route ingested data to be stored on AWS.
This dataset is expected leverage an assortment of AWS analytical capabilities including Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Glue and Amazon Redshift to develop a machine learning pipeline. Using Amazon SageMaker, it can then fine tune the growing protocols almost in real-time.
To collect data across the entire growing process, Grōv and AWS have developed sensor stations and plant growth monitoring cameras across the Olympus tower to collect data during the entire growing process.
This offers a continuous feedback loop between the tower and the dairy/beef operator. It also supports the company to constantly improve the nutritional value of each harvest.
Grōv’s Sowyer OS enables the towers to be monitored from a central master control across several installations and fast-track machine learning to constantly upgrade performance and output.
Grōv Technologies president Steve Lindsley said: “With a growing population, climate change, and economic uncertainty, farmers are being asked to do more with less and find innovative ways to overcome these challenges.
“Our collaboration with AWS has helped us develop a data-driven vertical farming platform that’s economically viable and environmentally sustainable for large dairy and beef operations as well as smaller family farms.”
Amazon Web Services healthcare, life sciences, genomics and agriculture worldwide lead Shez Partovi said: “AWS is excited to support Grōv in its mission to help farmers and ranchers sustainably feed the world. AWS machine learning and computer vision is helping Grōv improve operational effectiveness of its tower farms by converting sensor data to meaningful insights.
“AWS and Grōv will continue to collaborate on innovative ways to improve the nutrition and yield of every harvest to meet the demands of global food security.”