After a 24-hour hackathon, in which 17 international teams took part, the five winning teams for the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge were announced in a hybrid event.
The third edition of the challenge is organised by Wageningen University & Research and Tencent.
The five winning teams are CVA, digital_cucumber, MondayLettuce, VeggieMight and team Koala. The winning teams will receive a place in the final challenge that will take place from February 2022 onwards. A lettuce crop then has to be grown with artificial intelligence algorithms – fully autonomous without human interaction – in reality.
17 teams with more than 140 participants and 18 nationalities participated in the hackathon. Of many teams, team members were physically present at the WUR location Bleiswijk during the 24-hour hackathon, other joined online in this hybrid event. They were connected to Bleiswijk online and communicated via Teams, phone and mail. People worked enthusiastically, and invented creative algorithms in order to grow lettuce virtually in a digital game environment.
AI approach and net profit
The hackathon consisted of different parts: an international jury gave points to the teams for their AI approach (40% of the points) and the net profit that was achieved in the game to grow virtual lettuce in a virtual greenhouse (60% of the points).
5 teams have been selected by the jury for the next round, in which they have to grow lettuce in a greenhouse compartment fully autonomously and in reality. The 5 winning teams are:
– Team CVA won the first place with 87 points. They have been second in the summer Online Challenge and now again showed a consistent performance. Team CVA – Crop Vision and Automation comes from Korea and consists of team members of Gyenggi University of Science and Technology, Agri-Food Human Resource Development Institute Croft, Motion2AI and Universal robots. Some members were also part of teams in the former edition.
– Team digital_cucumber, although a strange name, they were able to grow digital lettuce and were ranked second in the Hackathon. The team comes from Russia and has members of Russian Agricultural Bank, HSE University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian State Agrarian University, Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
– Team MondayLettuce was also from Korea with members of Kangwon National University, Pusan National University and ioCrops.
– Team VeggieMight has team members with different nationalities (Ukraine, coming from different companies such as Quantum, HortiPolaris, Horticompass Agri-tech Consultancy, Robolect B.V. and students from Wageningen University and Research. They finished their task in the Hackathon the fastest.
– Team Koala already won a wild card during the summer Online Challenge. This Online Challenge was meant as a preparation for the current Hackathon. It included optimised climate control, but also the development of computer vision algorithms for automated extraction of plant traits from lettuce images. Team captain of team ‘Koala’ is Kenneth Tran, who also led the winning team ‘Sonoma’ in the first edition of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge in 2019.
During the pitch in front of an international jury, teams presented their scientific and practical approach for fully autonomous control of a greenhouse in terms of climate and crop production. The teams received points (40%) for their AI approach (new, functional, robust, scalable, deployment of artificial intelligence).
More points (60%) were achieved in the game environment: the net profit realised in euros in a virtual lettuce production. The teams were given access to a climate model and a lettuce crop growth model that were developed by researchers of WUR.
Gaming situation
The organizers had ensured that the models had so many possibilities that a “gaming” situation arose. The crop sometimes reacted differently than expected in a practical situation. The teams themselves determined the operational decisions on operating screens, artificial lighting, heating, supplemental CO2 and crop spacing decisions. They did this using their own AI algorithms. They were virtually growing, but they had to consider weather forecasts and could not redo the past, just like in reality.
February 2022
From February 2022 onwards, the AI algorithms developed by these teams will be running a lettuce cultivation in a real greenhouse compartment. Two cycles of a lettuce crop must then be grown fully autonomously. The first cycle is to test the algorithms and obtain additional training data. After allowing the teams so time to refine their algorithms, if needed, the second cycle will start in May. The result if this second cycle counts.