Platform for XR Agriculture Education

Background
Precision Agriculture is an active area for systems and agriculture research. As the cost of producing sensor equipment, IoT devices and self-driving vehicles decreases, the opportunity for optimizing agriculture has never been more apparent.

A Grand View Research report from 2019 estimates that precision agriculture is "expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.0% from 2020 to 2027"

We've teamed up with the College of Agriculture to experiment with new ways of teaching students about these technologies - what they are and how to use them - by creating a platform for continuous development and education.

Problem Definition
Our primary objectives were:


 * Correct the GIS map data leftover from the last team to provide for "smooth" VR tractor driving experiences.
 * Create a basis for programmable auto-driving for future optimization tasks. (The base should allow for optimizing for time, fuel, reduction in soil erosion, etc.)

Deliverables
Given the surprising number of blockers we encountered, we ended up reducing our scope for deliverables significantly. For prosperity, I have kept the list of our original plans, and our revision.

Original Plans

 * A demonstration of soil erosion simulation integrated with Farming Simulator
 * A demonstration of pathfinding optimization across real-world terrain data (The Cook's Farm)

Revised Plans

 * We were able to interpolate extra data for the real-world map transfer and verify feature scaling was appropriately sized and preserved. The final map and its components are included in our mod.
 * We developed a system for constructing geometries on which auto-drive could function. This functionality is included in our mod.
 * We are created a manual to be included with this project for our client and team handoff - along with recommendations for future work, features, and a list of ideas that should be avoided at all costs and why.
 * Farming Simulator Account - the materials provided to our team were not reusable - such as the Farming Simulator activation code and disc. We instead created a new Steam account that allowed us to share a single copy of the game across 3+ multiplatform (Windows, NixOS, Linux) devices.

Impossible Deliverables

 * Anything to do with modern soil erosion
 * Integration of potential future technolgies, especially anything optics related.

Our research showed that soil erosion can be done with modern techniques on modest hardware to provide users with stunning insights. However, because Farming Simulator uses Lua 5.1 in a sandbox mode, it is not possible to construct any IO functions to communicate with external processes, servers, or files.

Technologies

 * Farming Simulator 2019
 * Oculus Rift - stationary VR headset
 * Lua (5.1)
 * QGIS
 * Google Earth Pro
 * MicroDEM
 * Excel
 * GIMP

Team Member Contact Information
Joshua Dempsey - demp5996@vandals.uidaho.edu Conrad Mearns - mear8979@vandals.uidaho.edu Damon Schafer - scha1331@vandals.uidaho.edu

Document Archive
Team Contract

Joshua Dempsey Logbook

Damon Schafer Logbook

Conrad Mearns Logbook

Minutes