Augmented Reality in Precision Farming: Concepts and Applications

Summary

The amount of arable land is limited, yet the demand for agricultural food products is increasing. This issue has led to the notion of precision farming, where smart city-based technologies (e.g., Internet of Things, digital twins, artificial intelligence) are employed in combination to cater for increased production with fewer resources. Widely used in manufacturing, augmented reality has demonstrated impactful solutions for information communication, remote monitoring and increased interaction. Yet, the technology has only recently begun to find a footing alongside precision farming solutions, despite the many benefits possible to farmers through augmenting the physical world with digital objects. Therefore, this article reflects on literature discussing current applied solutions within agriculture, where augmented realty has demonstrated a significant impact for monitoring and production. The findings discuss that augmented reality must be coupled with other technologies (e.g., simultaneous localization and mapping algorithms, global positioning systems, and sensors), specifically 9 are identified across 2 application domains (livestock and crop farming) to be beneficial. Attention is also provided on how augmented reality should be employed within agriculture, where related-work examples are drawn from in order to discuss suitable hardware approaches and constraints (e.g., mobility).