Augmented reality and Digiscape apps: D61+Live, 2-3 October

We showed off Digiscape’s apps and other digital agriculture innovations in Sydney this week at D61+Live, Australia’s premier digital science, technology and innovation event.

We demonstrated our work using popular gaming platforms, sensor technologies and next-generation data interaction techniques to help prawn farmers make decisions to boost productivity.

Using state-of-the-art wearable and hands-free technologies while they’re walking around and managing the ponds will give farmers near real-time understanding of key water quality parameters like dissolved oxygen and pH levels.

Prawn farmers tell us that they don’t actually farm prawns, they farm water quality.

This could give them the information they need to better manage animal health and feed inputs, for example, and even share the visuals in real time with managers in the office or external experts for fast input.

The technology uses the power of Data61’s Senaps platform, which helps businesses connect data in a range of different formats, integrate complex analytics and turn it into useful intelligence that can make a difference.

Pacific Reef Fisheries Pty Ltd, a prawn farm operator in Ayr near Townsville in northern Queensland, is working with us to provide real world conditions for testing the system.

Environmental Manager Kristian Mulholland said augmented reality in the aquaculture industry had the potential to transform productivity in the industry.

“Augmented reality technology could be a huge game changer for our industry to make water quality monitoring so much quicker and easier, all in real time, and bringing a visual aspect of data display to efficiently make more accurate management decisions,” he said.

We’ve chosen prawn farming as the first agricultural industry to test this technology, with a view to expanding into other complex agricultural environments soon.

Read our media release.

Read more about Digiscape’s aquaculture project.