A data and images viewer Web application for a Field Server (FS-DIVA) was developed to display both meteorological and soil data and the corresponding images. FS-DIVA uses only existing XML configuration files and XML data files from the Field Server. The application can automatically access data and images of a Field Server installed newly without modifying the application’s programming and data. Formerly, it was difficult to process data and image files as long-term sequential data because the data recorded by Field Server are output in a single XML file per day. We solved this problem by developing a preprocessing program that rapidly processes a large number of XML files from multiple days. To quantify the preprocessing software’s performance at parsing the XML files, we measured the speeds with two kinds of SAX and DOM, and estimated the amount of data processing that can be performed within an acceptable waiting time. We initially developed the user interface as a Java Applet, and then developed a new version as a Java Servlet to take advantage of the release of the AJAX software. Because the data and images can be accessed via a URL using the parameters of the Java Servlet, it becomes possible to easily use the Field Server data as an input for other applications.

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In Japan, the decreasing population of farmers and the increasing ages of those who remain have become serious problems. To deal with these problems, community-based farming and corporate farming are increasing in popularity, with the goal of cultivating a larger field area by using a progressively smaller number of people. To accomplish this, farmers need support from advanced technology to permit automatic guidance and unmanned operation of agricultural machinery such as tractors, rice transplanters, and combine harvesters, thereby increasing farming efficiency. In the future, if multiple agricultural robots work together, it will be necessary for farmers to monitor the robots and manage them remotely to increase the efficiency of farming and ensure the safety of the robotic operation. Therefore, we developed a remote monitoring system for agricultural robots, which functions as a database server that retains the operating history of the machines and a Web server to display machine status and report any trouble. We tested the operational and status-viewing performance of this system by using a head-feeding combine robot. The combine robot harvested the rice crop in a field, and wirelessly sent data on its position, status, and any trouble to the database server via a smartphone. The database server received and recorded the data, and the farmer was able to remotely access the Web server to monitor the status of the combine robot by using a smartphone or a personal computer. The Web server displays the position, status, and occurrence of any trouble for the combine robot by using Google Maps software and various GUIs that are accessed from a Web browser. Our results suggest that the remote monitoring system is an effective tool for management of the robot.

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The rapid growth in the number of mobile devices with small screens, such as mobile phones and smartphones, creates a necessity to reformat the data from Web sites designed for use on personal computers so that it is suitable for use by mobile phone users. As an example of a possible solution, we converted the well-used “Crop Science Glossary” Web site for use on mobile phones and Android devices. We emphasized ease of use for beginners in our development of a solution. We programmed the software that converts the data into a format suitable for mobile phones using the Tiny BASIC programming environment, which is free, and easy to use. To reformat the text, the original long text that was designed for use on a PC was cut into shorter text using ☆ (star mark) to indicate the position of the breaks, which we attached to the start of each term in the original text. We then added the required HTML tags before and after each piece of text. To identify each file, we added consecutive numbers to each of the file names. The resulting files were uploaded to the free FC2 homepage service. We created the Android application that would read this data using the free App-builder application development environment provided by AMUZENET, Inc., which allowed us to develop the program without requiring detailed programming knowledge. The software is now available at no cost from the Google Play store.

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The Field Server sensor network has been developed to provide support for activities such as monitoring that will improve agriculture. At the beginning of its development, we hoped that sensor nodes would be inexpensive devices, such as RF-ID devices. However, the cost of such components remains high, and they are not yet used widely. We tried to solve this problem by developing a mass-production method to fabricate a mass-production version of Field Server (MP-FS). First, we developed a prototype and collected information about the requirements and specification for MP-FS in various agricultural fields. This analysis revealed that the specifications of MP-FS were more diverse (because of the different needs of different crops and fields) than we had assumed. We defined new specifications for MP-FS based on this analysis, and considered the trade-off between product quality and cost in terms of reliability engineering and quality control that would let us fabricate a suitable MP-FS. We have now proposed a manufacturing method based on modular and simultaneous multi-dimensional design, and fabricated a new prototype MP-FS using the proposed method. We tested the ability of this new approach to decrease costs by means of experiments in three agricultural fields.

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We developed a shared version of FieldServer equipped with sensors and a wireless wearable terminal that tracks a farmer’s activities to test the possibility of revealing relationships between a farmer’s usual activities and the associated environmental data. This system represents a first step the effort to develop tools that allow farmers to share their activities with the local agricultural community. The system accumulates environmental data from the farm, farmer’s voice data, and video data before his eye by the wearable terminal camera. The environmental data recorded in the system are the temperature, relative humidity, and soil electrical conductivity. We have accumulated data from about 2 years of field trials, starting in September 2010, at a farm in Sapporo, Japan. With this system, the farmer’s past activities can be found from the environmental data accumulated in the system. By using the history of the farmer’s activities, recorded and monitored using the wireless wearable terminal, it was possible to study the planting of Chinese cabbage and determine the relationship between the farmer’s activities and the associated environmental data. Pictures stored by FieldServer showed that the product grown at each location changed from season to season to avoid problems related to continuous cultivation of a single crop. We also compared the recorded environmental data with data from the Sapporo district meteorological observatory.

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