ADVENT INNOVATIONS LTD CO — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.13

Description

Peach thinning is a major expense for peach farming operations accounting for 60% of the totalcost during annual maintenance. The commonly used bloom thinning methods include handchemical and mechanical thinning. Hand thinning and mechanical thinning are the most widelyused but these methods are labor intensive inaccurate and have no built-in intelligence to properlyguide the thinning process.Advent Innovations in collaboration with the University of South Carolina and Titan Farms inRidge Spring SC proposes to develop a Smart Vision and AI-driven Peach Thinning Software (A- EYE) for accurate and efficient thinning of peach blossoms. By implementing artificial intelligencethe A-EYE software will be capable of real time decision making for faster and more accuratethinning which is essential during the short thinning period available. Vision processing tools andadvanced machine learning techniques will be used to actively identify productive blooms bydetermining the bloom density and color distribution leading to significant time and cost savingsand increased fruit size and profitability of an orchard. Unlike other purely data-driven AImethodologies the proposed A-EYE software will uniquely utilize organic information such ashuman knowledgebase and experiences along with the thinning requirements practiced by peachfarms. The software will be designed to utilize a digital database Advent Digi-Farm that Advent isalready developing for Titan Farms. This AI-driven visual processing unit will be integrated with aportable device (tablet laptop etc.) to guide the thinning process in real time.