Context

To be used in greenhouses, allowing caretakers, to easily spot at a glance if there are plants that are unhealthy and need attention.

Design concept

A camera monitors a section of a greenhouse and feeds the images to a system capable of determining if the plants are healthy or not. Currently there are for example sensors to automatically tell if the plants are too dry but this takes in the whole plants’ appearance, including diseased leaves etc. If a section is deemed to have unhealthy plants,  the light changes in that area to make the caretakers aware of the problem without having to go look at a terminal or getting intrusive alerts.

Experiential qualities and related concepts

Atmosphere, calm, fluency, organic, overview, peripheral awareness, visibility.

Augmentation modality

Visual.

Technical options

Cameras feed images to a classifier, which has been trained through machine learning to know the difference between a healthy plant and an unhealthy plant. This is connected to the lighting system or separate coloured lights would provide the light feedback.

Prototyping techniques

Wizard of Oz, as per in the video, where remote controlled coloured lighting was used.

Source

Ola Karlsson, 2018.
Link to Video