KKA group of early-career researchers in the Karl Popper Kolleg “FruitScope: A DroneScope for Smart Agriculture” is working on ways to use drone swarms in agriculture and forestry. Shivi Vats is part of this group. His research focuses on forest inventories using drone swarms, with particular emphasis on communication between the drones: How do they communicate in dense forests where no communications infrastructure is available? How do they transmit the information they collect? And how can the recorded data be compressed as effectively as possible?
Forestry involves demanding physical work for the people who work in the sector. One aspect of this work is the forest inventory: What species of trees are present in the forest? Where exactly are they located? How large are they and what condition are they in? What is the state of the vegetation on the forest floor? And which trees currently need to be felled? At present, forestry professionals still collect this information manually in the forest. A research team in the Karl Popper Kolleg “FruitScope: A DroneScope for Smart Agriculture” is now seeking to automate parts of this work with the help of drone swarms.
Shivi Vats has been a doctoral student in the group for the past eight months. He is supervised by Christian Timmerer, Professor at the Department of Information Technology. Shivi Vats focuses on communication. “When you are in the middle of a forest, there may be no connection to satellites, or no Wi-Fi or mobile network infrastructure. Nevertheless, the drones in the swarm still need to communicate with one another. We therefore need to create ways for them to do this. We use wireless networking modules in the drones that allow them to exchange information as long as they are within line of sight of one another – in other words, as long as there is no obstacle between them. Together, they form an ad hoc network.”
“The second challenge is that we are dealing with different types of information at different levels of communication. Some information has to be transmitted quickly, for example: Warning, there is an obstacle here! Other information, such as data on the size of a tree, does not need to be transmitted in real time. The second challenge is therefore to distinguish between these different types of communication and handle them accordingly,” Shivi Vats explains. The third challenge, which is also part of his research but is not directly related to communication, concerns data compression. As Shivi Vats explains, the aim is not to create and transmit an image of a tree that looks attractive to the human eye. It only needs to contain the information required by the algorithm. The image therefore only has to preserve the basic features that the machine can interpret. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted.
Shivi Vats has been at the University of Klagenfurt since 2018. He came to Klagenfurt after completing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Engineering at the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Una, India, to study for the master’s programme in “Game Studies and Engineering”. “I had always wanted to study Game Studies. The combination of Game Studies and Game Engineering offered here is unique, which is why I decided to come to Klagenfurt.” While still a student, Shivi Vats worked as a project assistant at the Department of Information Technology, and he now also teaches on the GSE master’s programme. His main interest has always been the engineering side: “I am a software person through and through. I enjoy programming. I may now be working with drones as hardware, but developing algorithms is at the heart of my work.”
Shivi Vats still finds time – now outside his work – to enjoy playing and programming games. Moving from Delhi, a city of 22 million people, to Klagenfurt, with a population of around 100,000, also brought other adjustments: “It is so quiet. At first, I had to get used to the silence. Now, I no longer notice it,” he says with a smile. He has also solved the problem of finding good Indian food locally: “I simply learned how to cook.” After eight years, Shivi Vats has found a home in Carinthia, where he would also like to stay. If opportunities arise for him to continue working in academia, he would like to take them: “The advantages and disadvantages of academia stem from the same thing: there is always something new! The advantage is that everything is constantly new and exciting. The disadvantage is that new things require more effort than expected. You constantly have to find and develop new solutions. But that is also something I enjoy.”
.flex_column.av-i60hsc1-c3e43db3bd48f23ed53cb8c5a5551547{
border-radius:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:25px 25px 25px 25px;
}
#top .av-special-heading.av-msylarl9-cec8728aa272fd8497bd6102afde6713{
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding-bottom:0;
}
body .av-special-heading.av-msylarl9-cec8728aa272fd8497bd6102afde6713 .av-special-heading-tag .heading-char{
font-size:25px;
}
.av-special-heading.av-msylarl9-cec8728aa272fd8497bd6102afde6713 .av-subheading{
font-size:15px;
}
A few words with … Shivi Vats
When was the last time you discussed your research with someone outside the scientific community?
I discuss my research every now and then with my partner and my friends.
What is the first thing you do in the office each morning?
Say hi to all of my colleagues and get some coffee! Although lately I’ve been trying to do less of the latter.
What makes you furious?
The current state of the world in how we are moving towards a right-wing hyper-capitalist future with little regards for the environment and how there is seemingly no stopping it.
And what calms you down?
Spending time with like-minded friends. Playing (video or tabletop) games and reading books.
Do you ever take proper holidays? Without thinking about your work?
Absolutely. I do not take these holidays for granted and make sure to keep my mind off work when on vacation, as is also encouraged by my peers and supervisors!
Der Beitrag How drones communicate during forest inventories erschien zuerst auf University of Klagenfurt.