Scottish agri-tech company reaches for the SKAi

SoilEssentials, the precision farming solutions pioneers, based in Angus, Scotland has announced an exciting new artificial intelligence platform aimed at safeguarding food production and the environment.

SKAi, the SoilEssentials KORE Artificial Intelligence project, is developing re-trainable smart camera vision in order to recognise, map and precision apply agrochemicals to crops.

SoilEssentials Managing Director Jim Wilson stated:

“We are encouraged by the findings of our feasibility project, Grass Vision, which successfully developed a low-cost machine vision system to recognise and precision apply herbicides to broad leaved weeds in grassland.”

“The SKAi project will build on this success and take it to the next level. The aim is that in the very near future we will have technology available which can ensure accurate differentiation between crop and weed species and therefore enable precision targeting of agro-chemicals.”

“Ultimately this targeting technology will allow farmers, agronomists and agrochemical applicators to dramatically reduce the total amount of protection products applied to crops across Britain and worldwide.”

“The SKAi technology will be integrated into our existing KORE precision farming platform, extending its functionality to allow the support of in-field smart cameras using image transfer and machine learning.”

The three-year SKAi project, which is supported by Innovate UK, brings together agricultural practitioners with space industry technicians, agronomists and electrical engineers.

Project lead SoilEssentials Ltd is partnered in the project by Deimos Space UK Ltd, Peacock Technology Ltd, Scottish Agronomy Ltd and the University of the West of England.

Jim Wilson, left and Robert Ramsay – Directors of SoilEssentials