ABSTRACT
The advent of smart agriculture has revolutionized agricultural management. It is an emerging technology that uses modern sensing and communication technologies such as internet of things (IoT), unmanned aerial vehicles, robotics and automation and artificial intelligence. The technology recognizes the factors responsible for diminished agricultural yields and helps to track them in a real-time mode. Simultaneous monitoring of qualitative and quantitative improvement in the agricultural production, optimization of parameters such as environmental conditions, soil conditions, plant growth and its health can be done on a real-time basis. Interestingly, the data collected from various sensors with wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be utilized to measure parameters that ensures better plant growth for enhancing agricultural management. On the contrary, manual intervention can be reduced to the maximum as the wireless monitoring of plant parameters provides accurate status of plant nutrition and health. Furthermore, the technology focuses on development of devices and tools to monitor, display, and inform the farmers regarding agricultural parameters. The recent development of IoT-based robotics and automation lead to dynamic, fast, and accurate farming with 136increase in agricultural yields. Additionally, geological and meteorological information existing as numerical, or image data could be analyzed promptly using artificial intelligence. This would further help to make an effective decision on pest control, fertilizer usage, and water management, etc. This chapter reviews the existing and emerging sensors along with wireless network, IoT, artificial intelligence, and other communication technologies, focused on agricultural industry. It also discusses the existing practical difficulties and implementation challenges of the latest technologies; also extends discussion on the future direction of smart agriculture.
