Seminar: Towards the Internet of Agricultural Things: Optimization, AI, and Communication Solutions for Modern Farming

_Abstract

Agriculture faces growing challenges, including rising costs, labor shortages, and the increasing need for efficiency and product quality. The Internet of Agricultural Things (IoAT) offers promising solutions through technologies such as weather and soil sensors, automated feeders, RFID tags, and computer vision systems, enabling data-driven decision-making. However, widespread adoption is hindered by constraints such as limited broadband connectivity, low-power device capabilities,  costs, and farmer acceptance of new technologies.

In this talk, we first provide an overview of IoAT technologies and their impact on modern farming. Motivated by connectivity challenges, we present iCrop+, a LoRa-based crop disease detection system that integrates on-device AI with deep learning for remote processing. We evaluate iCrop+ using a real-world prototype, demonstrating its viability for deployment in resource-constrained agricultural environments. Subsequently, we discuss the use of IoAT technologies for disease detection in diary calves. We present a framework that efficiently performs cost-aware feature selection  to provide high accuracy in detecting Bovine Respiratory Disease while reducing the cost for farmers. We conclude by providing some feature research directions and open problems.

_Biography

Simone Silvestri is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. Before joining UK, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2010 from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.

Dr. Silvestri’s research has been supported by several national and international agencies, including NIFA, NATO, and the NSF. He has contributed to projects totaling more than $6 million in funding and received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2020.

He has published over 100 papers in leading international journals and conferences, and has served in the organization of several conferences and events, including serving as General Co-Chair of IEEE ICNP and Technical Program Co-Chair of IEEE SECON, IEEE SmartComp, ACM ICDCN, and IEEE DCOSS. He also serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and received the Excellent Editor Award from IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering and Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing. In addition, he has served on the technical program committees of more than 100 ACM and IEEE conferences.