Agricultural Knowledge Management Using Smart Voice Messaging Systems: Combination of Physical and Human Sensors

The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in agricultural knowledge management systems is one of the most promising approaches to increasing the efficiency of agriculture. However, the existing physical sensors in agriculture are limited for monitoring various changes in the characteristics of crops and may be expensive for the average farmer. We propose a combination of physical and human sensors (the five human senses). By using their own eyes, ears, noses, tongues, and fingers, farmers could check the various changes in the characteristics and conditions (colors of leaves, diseases, pests, faulty or malfunctioning equipment) of their crops and equipment, verbally describe their observations, and capture the descriptions with audio recording devices, such as smartphones. The voice recordings could be transcribed into text by web servers. The data captured by the physical and human sensors (voice messages) are analyzed by data and text mining to create and improve agricultural knowledge. An agricultural knowledge management system using physical and human sensors encourages to share and transfer knowledge among farmers for the purpose of improving the efficiency and productivity of agriculture. We applied one such agricultural knowledge management system (smart voice messaging system) to a greenhouse vegetable farm in Hokkaido. A qualitative analysis of accumulated voice messages and an interview with the farmer demonstrated the effectiveness of this system. The contributions of this study include a new and practical approach to an "agricultural Internet of Everything (IoE)" and evidence of its effectiveness as a result of our trial experiment at a real vegetable farm.