GreenTech

GreenTech is a comprehensive solution that generates electricity from Solar panels and water from Air humidity with Smart irrigation system. a dashboard based on IOT technology that provides real-time and automated readings of temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture reading at all Greehouses at once. This provides smart irrigation with an early alert/notification system that triggers digital and physical actions if temperature, humidity or soil moisture reach the low or high predefined parameters. The early alert and notification help efficient use of water and electricity and maintain health of crops at the Greenhouse. 

Until today The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department at the Ministry of Agriculture is not able to plant any Crops at any Greenhouse in Bahrain from May till end of September due to hot weather and high cost of electricity. The water scarcity and traditional old irrigation systems provide another dimension of the problem. The opportunity is to generate sustainable resources through Low cost electricity (Solar/Renewable) and water from humidity to enable farmers implement smarter irrigation system that contributes to Bahrain Food security and incorporate the SDG vision in Bahrain. The system has efficient farm management and a dashboard that enables farmers to produce higher quality /lower cost of production crops.

In collaboration between AWS and BP CIC, the ICT and Engineering students at BP developed GreenTech, which is a comprehensive solution that generates electricity from Solar panels and water from Air humidity and Smart irrigation system. A dashboard-based Amazon QuickSight on AWS IOT Core technology that provides real-time and automated readings of temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture reading at all Greehouses at once. The solution provides smart irrigation with an early alert/notification system that triggers digital and physical actions if temperature, humidity or soil moisture reach the low or high predefined parameters. The early alert and notification help efficient use of water and electricity and maintain health of crops at the Greenhouse. The solution has also a control panel/system that is automatically opens and closes valves and pumps to maintain the green level predefined temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture. A notification system is sent to the supervisor mobile whenever an alert or notification is triggered.  

” The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department is passionate and committed to enhance and support food Security across Bahrain. GreenTech is here to give The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department a vehicle to accelerate their journey to Digital Transformation,” said Mike Bainbridge, EMEA Cloud Innovation Centers leader at AWS. ” we want The Fodder &Nursery Farming Department to tap into latest AWS technologies to solve their real world problems and achieve Food Security in Bahrain along with several SDG that align with Bahrain Vision 2030″.

The Fodder & Nursery Farming supervisor tested Greentech at one Greenhouse for temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture as a start. The supervisor has a visual dashboard to monitor and maintain the green level of temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture level at the Greenhouse. The system is real time and keeps ingesting sensors’ data to the dashboard. If any sudden change in temperature, humidity level and soil Moisture happens, Lambda triggers a notification to the supervisor mobile and triggers an automated pump and actuators to pump water that irrigates crops and control temperature in the Greenhouse depending on the reading from the sensors. 

“It was an eye opener working closely with AWS and BP to develop Greentech” said Jassim A.Karim Ali ,head of  Fodder & Nursery Farming Department at the Ministry of Municipalities” The ability to plant during summer is more than 35% of the total plantation at the Greenhouses and this is a huge supply to the Bahraini market and great impact and value added to food safety across Bahrain.to food safety across Bahrain.

GreenTech is available for pilot at the Greenhouses with additional power and communication tools to make sure of the remote sites benefit from the system. 

Until today The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department at the Ministry of Agriculture has been issuing manual and visual means to detect plant disease alongside manual spraying of pesticides in a conventional way. There is no available real-time reporting of accurate diseases, locations, and exact times. Robotech provides cost-effective, autonomous navigation, 24/7, and real-time reporting of any detected plant disease in the Greenhouses. 

In a collaboration between AWS and BP CIC, the ICT and Engineering students at BP developed Robotech, which is a comprehensive solution that consists of cameras, containers, pumps, and IoT sensors mounted over a small-size vehicle that acts as an integrated solution for navigation, detection and fighting diseases through spraying pesticides. The detection and spray functionalities along with real-time reporting of plant infection disease are reflected on an interactive dashboard that shows in the Crisis and Disaster Management control room all reported plant diseases from all greenhouses in one interface. The Robotech dashboard provides information to facilitate leadership to take informed decisions and move teams in an effective, speedy, and efficient manner.

“The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department is passionate and committed to enhance and support food Security, and fight plant diseases across Bahrain. Robotech is here to give The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department a vehicle to accelerate their journey to Digital Transformation,” said Mike Bainbridge, EMEA Cloud Innovation Centers leader at AWS. “We want The Fodder & Nursery Farming Department to tap into latest AWS technologies to solve their real-world problems and achieve Food Security in Bahrain along with several SDG that align with Bahrain Vision 2030”. 

The Fodder & Nursery Farming supervisor tested Robotech at one greenhouse for multiple types of plant disease as a start. The supervisor has a visual dashboard to monitor and respond immediately in case of any harmful diseases that are detected, to control the disease spread at the Greenhouse. The system utilizes Robots with AWS IoT Core, AWS Rekognition, Serverless Lambdas, AWS SNS for notification, and RDS for data storage and a custom-built dashboard that requires minimal maintenance. RoboTech works by automatically surveying the client’s greenhouses on specified schedules by the supervisor and ingesting live imagery from the greenhouses to the AWS machine learning systems and if any plant diseases are detected, a process triggers a notification to the supervisor mobile and allows them to remotely spray pesticides at the greenhouse or to simply assign a different remediation technique to be taken by the farmers. It also notifies management when it needs refilling of its pesticides tanks or needs charging.  

The team behind RoboTech has also built several internal systems and processes that allow them to improve and monitor the performance of the machine learning models and the different AWS services utilized to ensure that the system is automatically being enhanced in a self-learning loop from the user’s feedback.

“It was an eye opener working closely with AWS and BP to develop Robotech” said Jassim A.Karim Ali, head of Fodder & Nursery Farming Department at the Ministry of Municipalities. The ability to detect any plant disease and mitigate their issues before spreading and minimize mass spray of pesticides could result in a 25% increase in crops at the greenhouses and this is a huge supply to the Bahraini market and great impact and value added to food safety across Bahrain. 

Robotech is available for a pilot at the greenhouses with additional power and communication tools to make sure the remote sites benefit from the system.