ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS AERIAL SPRAYING

July 28, 2000

SCIENCE & ENGINEERING NEWS

Athens, GA. — They’re out there chomping away. Gypsy moths and spruce budworms can defoliate entire forests in short order without aerial spraying, so several times a year, specially equipped airplanes and helicopters set out to deposit loads of pesticide over thousands of acres.

The good news is that proper planning and precise aerial spraying can kill the pests before they grow out of the larval stage and begin to gnaw through the forest canopy. The bad news is that there’s much room for improvement in how the pesticides are targeted on forests.

That’s why a team that includes a computer scientist from the University of Georgia is, for the first time, using artificial intelligence tools called genetic algorithms to control how aerial spraying application models do their work. The new system has been tested successfully in the lab and could be in field trials by the end of this year.

“This research is about what happens to the spray right when it leaves the aircraft,” said Don Potter, a researcher with UGA’s Artificial Intelligence Center and associate professor in the department of computer science. “Our job is finding a better way to get the spray from the air to the ground.”

The project is funded by the U.S. Forest Service, and includes scientists from that USDA-run organization and also from a company in Princeton, N. J., called Continuum Dynamics.

Potter presented research on the spray modeling and application technology June 20 in New Orleans at the 13th Annual International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. The corresponding research paper won the Best Paper Award at the same conference. A description of the work will also be published this fall as a chapter in Practical Applications of Soft Computing Techniques (Kluwer Publishing Co.).

UGA Artifical Intelligence Center graduate student Wan Ying Bi has worked with Potter on the project. Scientists from the Forest Service include Dan Twardus, Harold Thistle, Mark Twery and John Ghent. Milt Teske collaborates from Continuum Dynamics.

The problems facing aerial sprayers fighting the gypsy moth and the spruce budworm are nothing new. Decades ago, sprayers saturated some areas of the Northeast with DDT, which effectively controlled the rapacious forest-eating moths. Unfortunately, there were considerable unintended effects from DDT, including the systematic softening of bird eggshells. Federal officials banned DDT, and the race was on to find another pesticide.

Scientists found a better spray with a naturally occurring insecticide called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt),which is specific to caterpillar species. Bt is much more ecologically sound because it controls gypsy moths and spruce budworms without causing harm to other species.

Along the way, scientists and government officials realize that broadcast spraying wasn’t the best way to control forest pests, either. What they needed was a computer program that could control sprayers by taking into account a number of variables such as wind speed, airplane altitude and humidity.

The earliest models were developed by the U.S. Army but they were limited because they did not incorporate so-called “near-field wake dynamics,” which involve vortices created by the aircraft. The next generation spraying model was called the Forest Service Cramer-Barry-Grim (FSBCG) spray dispersion model, and it, too, was an improvement, but like the Army models on which it was based, the newer version had problems calculating near-wake flow fields.

Another model called AGDISP followed FSCBG, with which it was later combined to form the best system yet for controlling how aerial spraying systems do their work. Finally, during the 1990s, a much-improved model called AgDRIFT came into use, and sprayers had their best computer help so far in targeting pests from the air.

“Problems still remained, though, and the Forest Service started to look at things in another way,” said Potter. “The earlier simulations assume you know all the parameters, and you’d input them, and the model would give you answers about how best to spray. What they needed was a system where a pilot could put in the desired spray results and then let the system figure out how best to achieve these results. It would be like listening to an expert.”

Potter and his colleagues from the Forest Service and Continuum Dynamics thought the answer might lie in genetic algorithms. These computer programs are decision-making rather than just simulation models. A genetic algorithm uses the initial input from a human expert in a field and then uses that knowledge to make extremely fine distinctions in problem-solving and to recommend best solutions.

Though genetic algorithms had never been used in sprayer-modeling before, the results so far in the laboratory have been encouraging, Potter said. The team’s spray application is called SAGA – an acronym for Spray Advisor Genetic Algorithm. The researchers combined a genetic algorithm with a slightly modified version of the AGDISP model to achieve their success.

The variables that SAGA controls include aircraft altitude, nozzle type and number, airplane characteristics, environmental characteristics such as humidity, and aircraft flight pattern. The knowledge of the expert system is embedded in such a way that the computer makes an extremely sensitive analysis of how the insecticide can best be sprayed.

The pilot would then theoretically take the results generated by the SAGA system – which, according to Potter might take, depending on complexity, 30 minutes to two hours – and input them into an on-board computer that would completely control all spraying from the aircraft. The result would be a precision spray that takes advantage of an advanced analysis of numerous variables involved.

The next step will be to incorporate Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) information in the program. This would add important information on terrain to the program, Potter said.

When SAGA is finished, it will be available to private sprayers as well – though it would likely have to be modified for crop spraying. “There’s no reason it shouldn’t work on crops, though,” said Potter.

============================================================

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire