Project | PlantMap

The PlantMap project goal is a high-resolution spatiotemporal 3D map representation of individual plants – the PlantMap. Such a map will be filled with plant data taken by autonomous robots navigating in unstructured environments in order to support organic farming. The navigation and control software Move Base Flex, which is used worldwide and developed by us, as well as the extension for multi-level 3D uneven outdoor terrain – the mesh navigation – allows autonomous navigation in steep and unstructured terrain, such as vegetable, fruit or market gardens and agroforestry farms. An autonomous robot can thus track the condition, development, and growth of individual plants, their shape and phenotype, and other plant parameters on a daily basis. This allows to give cultivation recommendations, collect AI training data, as well as new knowledge about the complexities of bio-intensive agriculture to contribute to significant optimization of organic farming practices and potential methods and technologies. Through PlantMap, the influence of environmental influences, the gene activity, and phenotype can be measured and targeted. These plant parameters as well as training data can be derived from autonomously recorded data. Training data can be used not only for the recognition of plants, their development stages and for the detection of plant diseases, but also in order to provide recommendations for action to vegetable gardeners, plant breeders and farmers. In the course of developing the PlantMap, there will be web-based applications and cloud services that will not only support organic and bio-intensive farmers, but will also support newcomers or those switching to organic farming, such as conventional farmers. Part of our project are not only software solutions to support and promote bio-intensive agriculture, but also autonomous monitoring - and later also agricultural robots as a hardware solution in cooperation with agricultural machinery manufacturers.