NaLamKI

Crop cultivating agriculture secures humanity’s nutrition and is, not only in Germany, one of the most important economic domains. Sustainable use of natural resources and securing reliable harvests are of essential importance for society. At the same time, agriculture faces many challenges: In addition to the influences of climate change, the management of nutrient cycles and crop protection need to be improved and the lack of skilled workers affects the quality of the production processes. To make agricultural production more agile and future-proof, these changed conditions need to be addressed and necessary adaptations must be designed efficiently; they need to be supported and accelerated in all areas of agriculture. Agriculture can then generate stable yields with efficient use of resources and with the protection of our natural resources soil, water, air, and biodiversity. To this end, crop production needs innovative approaches, which can transfer existing and new data-driven technologies into applications and check them for practical relevance and economic efficiency.

NaLamKI starts here with the aim of making AI and cloud technologies usable for crop cultivating agriculture as key technologies in the federal government's digitization strategy. Data from remote sensing, ground sensors and machines are fused using AI technology, analyzed to optimize agricultural processes, and further leveraged to control autonomous robots. The status of the agricultural process is visualized to practitioners, resulting perspectives are estimated, and interventions for the realization of possible scenarios are recommended.

The data and AI services are made available interoperable and decentral by using open standards based on GAIA-X. Data sovereignty and data security are explicitly considered. The result is an ecosystem that respects the heterogeneity of agricultural production processes and enterprises and at the same time allows non-discriminatory access for third-party providers.

Fraunhofer HHI is involved in NaLamKI with the research groups „Computer Vision & Graphics“ and „Interactive & Cognitive Systems“ from the department „Vision & Imaging Technologies“ and with the research groups “Signal & Information Processing” and „System Level Innovations“ from the department „Wireless Communications & Networks“. The focus of HHI’s work in NaLamKI is the development of AI technologies for the analysis of remote sensing data, for the acquisition and integration of expert and domain knowledge, for the modelling of agricultural processes and for 5G-based networks. Furthermore, the development of concepts to check the plausibility of the AI results and the generated models is mainly worked on by researchers at Fraunhofer HHI.