Introduction to Augmented Reality in Agriculture
Beaming a 3D, interactive, cattle yard into your front room is a technology already here and can soon be utilized in the agriculture industry. Digital entrepreneur Tim Gentle, the founding father of Farm VR, has progressed his farming technology into augmented reality (AR), which mixes the virtual world with the actual world. According to Mr. Gentle, AR is where you’ll be able to project images of 3D objects around you, with a straightforward pair of glasses or cell phone, just like the Pokémon Go phenomenon.
How Augmented Reality Works
Augmented reality is admittedly going to reshape the best way we work with content, said Mr. Gentle. Instead of taking a look at a screen or putting on a headset, the content is sort of going to be around us. For example, you may have two beers on the table and one is augmented and one is real — which one do you grab? This technology has the potential to vary the best way we interact with our surroundings and make our lives easier.
Live Demonstration of Augmented Reality
Mr. Gentle demonstrated his recent technology on the recent Northern Territory Cattlemen’s conference in Alice Springs, showing how cattle yard models could possibly be projected into surroundings. He used architectural drawings of a cattle yard and rendered them up onstage, allowing him to walk through them as if they were there. This technology might be useful for farmers who need to see how a cattle yard would appear like of their paddock before constructing it.
Potential Uses of Augmented Reality in Agriculture
The potential uses of augmented reality in agriculture are countless, especially when buying livestock without driving a whole lot of kilometers to see the animals within the flesh. Imagine reading the newspaper or searching through a magazine and seeing a bull you are involved in, you set your device over it and boom, there it’s. Suddenly you are walking around a 3D bull, you are looking underneath, you are looking at its feet, back, spine … whether you are ordering semen or buying that bull direct. The technology can be used for agricultural training purposes, corresponding to weed identification or milking cows.
New Age Farming
The digital educator said it was actually the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association that pushed him to develop farming augmented reality. They stimulated the thought process and got it out of him, said Mr. Gentle. He is planning on having his Farm AR app running and available to download in just a few months. In terms of applying the technology to the industry more widely, he said that may likely occur as wearable technology becomes more outstanding.
Using Augmented Reality Offline
For places just like the Northern Territory, where many stations have little to no mobile coverage, augmented reality might sound unimaginable. However, Mr. Gentle said devices may have options where you’ll be able to download data while in connectivity, after which use it once offline. If you put in an app on wifi, you then would not need connectivity after that, he said. The app would not must be online.
Conclusion
In conclusion, augmented reality is a technology that’s going to vary the best way we work within the agriculture industry. It has the potential to make our lives easier and more efficient. As Mr. Gentle said, I simply love farming, and this isn’t going to switch the actual stuff. However, it will possibly be a useful gizmo to assist farmers make higher decisions and improve their productivity. With the event of wearable technology and offline capabilities, augmented reality goes to grow to be more accessible and widely utilized in the agriculture industry.
