PROJECTS

InOlive

Smart monitoring system to prevent pests and diseases in olive groves

The olive grove is currently a very important economic and heritage asset for the national economy, requiring a new approach to its operational management, its monitoring and follow-up, using and integrating technologies that have already been tested in precision agriculture and in other areas. However, it is not just about promoting the incorporation of technology in the olive grove, but above all adding scientific knowledge to technology that allows increasing the sustainability of the olive growing operation in all its economic and environmental extension. It is this knowledge that will make it possible to anticipate events (climate changes, pests and diseases), thus allowing for anticipation to act, promoting eco-sustainable integrated protection programs.

The new challenges for olive growing are greater productivity, quality and sustainability, and for this the cultural practices of the olive grove and the phenology of the plant need to be in tune. It is essential to increasingly observe the plant in an integrated way with the main biotic and abiotic factors and to understand the desired balance in good time for monitoring to be effective.

To this end, the InOlive solution – Intelligent Monitoring Solution for the Prevention of Pests and Diseases in Olival Groveswill provide an intelligent robotic trap incorporating advanced technologies for sensing, georeferencing and image acquisition by computer vision, which will monitor pests and the prevention of diseases associated either with pests or with other environmental factors. The issuing of alerts, notices and recommendations will be carried out with the support of the intelligent management system (web and mobile) that will continuously acquire and analyze data in the field and interpret them (learning through Machine Learning techniques) according to the parameters defined as ideals proven in the olive grove.

The overall goals to be achieved
with this project are:

Development of a technological solution composed of an intelligent robotic trap, with the following characteristics:

i) ability to carry out continuous monitoring of pests, which performs local pre-processing and subsequent automatic sending to the central system of high quality images of the trap for identification and accounting of pests;

ii) incorporation of a set of sensors for constant monitoring of climate variables, essential for the prevention of pests and diseases;

iii) low-cost trap, self-consuming energy and resistant to adverse weather conditions (high and low temperatures);

iv) inclusion of a GPS module enhancing the geolocation of traps and their mobility over time;

Development of an intelligent management module, consisting of a Web Portal and Mobile Application, promoting mobility and quick access to information, capable of providing real-time information on all the topics of the solution, with special focus on the monitoring carried out by the traps (images obtained, identification and counting of pests and climate indices) and inclusion of phenology and phytosanitary models capable of predicting the occurrence and evolution of pests and diseases, and the respective triggering of warnings and alerts to support decision-making;

Collection and serialization of a unique set of images of traps for annotation of the olive moth and the olive fly, which will constitute an invaluable asset for training AI algorithms.

Obtaining a component for defining ground truth by specialists in identifying insect species in real traps, which will allow to improve the calibration of the solution in the supervised automatic learning phase. In addition, this component will enable the scalability of the solution and adaptation to new markets, i.e., new species of insects (another biodiversity) in new geographic areas in the post-project;

Climate sensing component implemented using open international norms and standards, ensuring interoperability and real-time communication, taking into account the heterogeneity of data sources (eg integration of weather stations and existing sensors on the ground).

In short, it is intended that the InOlive solution will contribute to quickly, accurately and economically determining the need and the right time to intervene in the fight against these pests and diseases of the olive grove, thus optimizing the use of pesticides.

More information

Acronym: InOlive
Beginning: 01/09/2019
End: 30/06/2023
Overall budget: 429.833,22 €
Status: Ongoing
Closing Date:
Financing: 132.945,81 €
Incentive Program: I&DT Project in Co-Promotion – Interior Territories – NORTE 2020
Responsible: Telmo Nogueira

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PROJECT SHEET

INOLIVE