We have transitioned the Project FarmBeats technologies to a product—Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (opens in new tab) (ADMA). The previous version, Azure FarmBeats (opens in new tab), in now ADMA.
Enabling data-driven farming
Several studies have demonstrated the need to significantly increase the world’s food production by 2050. However, there is limited amount of additional arable land, and water levels have also been receding. Although technology could help the farmer, its adoption is limited because the farms usually do not have power, or Internet connectivity, and the farmers are typically not technology savvy. We are working towards an end-to-end approach, from sensors to the cloud, to solve the problem.
Our goal is to enable data-driven farming. We believe that data, coupled with the farmer’s knowledge and intuition about his or her farm, can help increase farm productivity, and also help reduce costs. However, getting data from the farm is extremely difficult since there is often no power in the field, or Internet in the farms. As part of the FarmBeats project, we are building several unique solutions to solve these problems using low-cost sensors, drones, and vision and machine learning algorithms.
Explore more
- Article TV Dinners
Highlights
- Nov 4th, 2019: Azure FarmBeats (opens in new tab) is in Public Preview, and available on Azure Marketplace (opens in new tab).
- Our paper on sensing soil using Wi-Fi won the best paper runners up award at ACM MobiCom 2019
- Watch the Opening Keynote at InfoAg 2019 (opens in new tab).
- Our paper on low-cost aerial imaging won the best paper award at ACM Compass 2019
- FarmBeats was featured in the UN ITU AI for Good Global Summit
- Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapters receive Microsoft FarmBeats student kits for high school curriculum (opens in new tab)
- We were in a panel at the World Agri Tech Summit (opens in new tab) in San Francisco
- At the IoT for Earth (opens in new tab) event in Jan’19 we announced Microsoft FarmBeats is in Private Preview.
- Join us at the Future Farmers of America (FFA) Conference (opens in new tab) on October 26th, 2018
- Bill Gates wrote about FarmBeats (opens in new tab) in GatesNotes. See the video here (opens in new tab).
- Learn more (opens in new tab) about how we are partnering with DJI to improve farm productivity
- EY showcases FarmBeats with our partners DJI and Slantrange at HMI 2018
- USDA National Webinar (opens in new tab) on FarmBeats, hosted by NRCS. April 2018
- Received Geospatial World Excellence Award for FarmBeats in January, 2018
- Highlighted by Microsoft Garage Wall of Fame
- Highlighted (opens in new tab) by Satya Nadella as one of 10 projects that inspired him in 2017
- Awarded Outstanding Technical Achievement Award by the Microsoft AI School 2017
- Featured at Microsoft Envision (opens in new tab) 2017 & Precision Ag Vision Conference (opens in new tab) 2017
- Microsoft’s President Brad Smith talks about FarmBeats at the launch of Microsoft’s Rural Broadband Initiative (Video (opens in new tab), FarmBeats @ 1hr 7min)
- Featured on Voice of America (opens in new tab) and BBC Newsnight (opens in new tab)
- Showcased as one of 5 Windows IoT Innovative solutions
- Award for Internet of Things Innovation (opens in new tab) by the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance
- FarmBeats selected as a demo in Microsoft Build 2017
- Watch the FarmBeats Keynote at MidWest Big Data Hub
- Research paper & poster accepted in USENIX NSDI’17 (opens in new tab).
- Featured in The Economist story in September 2016: TV Dinners (opens in new tab)
- Winner of Industries Category of Microsoft Hackathon at //Oneweek 2016
- Participated in the Emerging Tech Virtual Summit (opens in new tab)session on “Increasing Farm Production using IoT” (10,000+ virtual participants)
- Featured in the Microsoft story on the Invisible Revolution (opens in new tab)
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We are building an end-to-end system that combines sensors and drones. Some of our research contributions include:
- Techniques to merge drone imagery with ground sensor data
- TV White Spaces (opens in new tab) based long range sensor networks in the farms
- Automation of drone flights in the farms
- Improving drone battery life (opens in new tab)
- An IoT gateway device for Agriculture
- Cloud support and ML services that are useful for Agriculture
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Interns and collaborators
In the US & India
- Heping Shi: 2017 onwards
- Tusher Chakraborty (BUET): 2017 onwards
- Prasad Pillai
- Parag Pandit
- Jerry Neal
- Michael Toelle
Farmers
- David Andrews (Sno Valley Tilth (opens in new tab))
- Sean Stratman (Dancing Crow Farm (opens in new tab))
- Mark Kimball (Essex Farms (opens in new tab))
- Andrew Nelson (Nelson Wheat)
Alumni:
- JongHo Won (opens in new tab) (Purdue): summer 2015
- Xinxin Jin (opens in new tab) (UCSD): summer 2015
- Madhusudan Sudarshan (Microsoft): 2015 to 2016
- Akshit Kumar (IIT Madras): 2016
- Akash Devgun (UC Boulder): 2017
- Jing Dong (opens in new tab) (Georgia Tech): 2017
- Michael Grant (WSU): 2017
- Sailaja Malladi (Microsoft): 2015 to 2017
- Rohit Patil (PES University, Bangalore): 2016, 2017
- Cameron Philips: 2017
- Rahul Sharma (Microsoft): 2016 onwards
- Aditya Jain (IIIT Delhi): 2017
- Binh Vu: 2017
- Sailaja Malladi: 2016, 2017
- Vasuki Narasimha Swamy (opens in new tab)(UC Berkeley): 2016 onwards
- Deepak Vasisht (opens in new tab) (MIT): 2015 onwards
- Zerina Kapetanovic (opens in new tab) (University of Washington): 2015 onwards
- Jian Ding (opens in new tab): 2017
- Suraj Jog: 2018 (UIUC)
- Colleen Josephson: 2018 (Stanford)
- Jing Dong: 2017 (Georgia Tech)
- Mingmin Zhao: 2019 (MIT)
- Sagar Jha: 2019 (Cornell)
- Youjie Li: 2019 (UIUC)
- Ali Kiaghadi: 2019 (UMass)
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- Microsoft catches the beat of the farm (opens in new tab), Robin Booker, The Western Producer, August 2019
- FFA uses innovative Microsoft solution to dive deeper into ag (opens in new tab), AgDaily, March 2019
- Data-driven agriculture: How IoT could change farming (opens in new tab), Simon Bisson, InfoWorld, May 2018
- Farming’s most important crop may be the knowledge harvested by drones and the intelligent edge (opens in new tab), Suzanne Choney, Microsoft News, May 2018
- Data Farming: Building Precision Agriculture With AI, IIoT, and Microsoft FarmBeats (opens in new tab), Ciaran Daly, AI Business, March 2018
- Data-Driven Farming Is Keeping Us All Well Fed (opens in new tab), Ronald Holden, Forbes, Jan 2018
- Microsoft FarmBeats (opens in new tab), Bob Larson, Fruit Grower Report, December 5, 2017
- Soil sensors, drones and data analytics are the new tools for farmers (opens in new tab), Peter Nowak, The Globe and Mail, November 27, 2017
- DelBene tours Dancing Crow Farm and Microsoft FarmBeats project, calls for innovative investments to modernize U.S. infrastructure (opens in new tab), Snoqualmie Valley Record, August 31, 2017
- Microsoft drives technology on farms to solve problems (opens in new tab) Sam Kilmister, NZFarmer, Stuff.co.nz, March 2017
- Artificial intelligence advances to make farming smarter (opens in new tab) Tim Cronshaw, NZFarmer, Stuff.co.nz, February 2017
- The Country Today (opens in new tab) New Zealand Herald, February 2017
- TV Dinners: Unused spectrum and drones could make smart farms a reality (opens in new tab), Mark Harris, The Economist, September 17, 2016
- Microsoft seeks STA from FCC to test TV white space for agriculture apps (opens in new tab), Monica Alleven, FierceWireless, June 20, 2016
- The Invisible Revolution (opens in new tab), Allison Linn, Microsoft Stories, April 2016
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- Plenary talk at CGIAR Big Data Conference (opens in new tab), Nairobi, October 5, 2018
- Keynote at Western Growers Association AgTechX (opens in new tab), September 18, 2018
- IoT in Action (opens in new tab) Series Webinar, August 2018
- FarmBeats: AI & IoT for Data-Driven Agriculture (opens in new tab), ICT4D Conference, Hyderabad, May 2017
- Keynote FarmBeats: AI & IoT for Data-Driven Agriculture (opens in new tab), Farm to Table Workshop, UIUC, April 2017
- FarmBeats: An IoT Platform for Data-Driven Agriculture (opens in new tab), USENIX NSDI Conference, March 2017
- Keynote FarmBeats: An IoT Platform for Data-driven Agriculture” (opens in new tab), eResearchNZ Conference, February 2017, Queenstown, NZ
- Keynote AI & IoT for Agriculture (opens in new tab) Microsoft AgTech Hackathon, February 2017, launch event in Palmerston North, New Zealand
- Dancing with intelligent dragon drones (opens in new tab), Strata+Hadoop World, December 6-8, Singapore
- FarmBeats: An IoT Platform for Data-driven Agriculture, ARPA-E Terra Review, November 2016, Phoenix
- FarmBeats: IoT for Agriculture (opens in new tab), Distinguished Speaker at ECE, UC Davis, October 28th, 2016
- IoT solutions for Agriculture, MSR India Summer School, June 2016