Case study

Growing Fresh Food in Outer Space

Smart vertical farm lighting and monitoring solution that reimagines food production on Earth and enables growing produce in space

AgricultureAI & MLData & AnalyticsDesignInternet of Things

Project snapshot

With the rising risks of climate change, resource depletion, and diminishing arable lands due to urbanization, providing enough food to feed the growing global population is becoming a challenge for traditional agriculture. Meanwhile, consumer demand for healthy and organic produce is increasing, making agribusinesses look for sustainable new ways to meet the food supply needs of a rapidly changing world.

Modern vertical agriculture allows growers to remove dependence on natural factors by creating and managing the farm’s microclimate. Being at the forefront of indoor farming innovation, our client, a global leader in intelligent lighting, empowers agribusinesses with smart horticultural technologies that enable resource-efficient vertical farms with controlled environments. These farms can be built in cities close to consumers, helping farmers cut transportation times and prevent food from spoiling.

Together with Intellias, our client has built a novel sensor-based lighting system for precise crop condition monitoring, uniform illumination, and optimized plant growth in enclosed environments. Today, the company is using the system in collaboration with NASA, researching plant cultivation and food production in space conditions to provide mission crews with fresh produce.

More than 40% of all produce perishes on the journey between the farm and the supermarket shelves due to improper post-harvest storage, processing, and transportation. And this is in a world where 870 million people do not have regular, reliable access to food.

UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Business challenge

As part of their constant research into global challenges that can be solved with technological innovations, our client was exploring possibilities to create more value by applying their core expertise to LED lighting systems for indoor growing.

Working with scientists from Michigan State University, the company started developing a comprehensive indoor horticultural lighting system to automatically illuminate plants and monitor their growth. They designed a set of hardware tools for artificial lighting to grow plants in confined environments, including on space stations.

To complement their hardware tools with the possibility to remotely control and monitor vertical farms, our client needed to develop a web application for indoor agricultural lighting. The software would allow growers to monitor plants with image recognition, control digital lighting to improve growth, and optimize climate conditions for vertical farms.

Intellias offered expertise in developing vertical farming solutions together with experience in data engineering, IoT connectivity, and sensor-based technologies. This expertise was critical for integrating a new application into our client’s IoT platform that would process billions of measurements for end customers who install our client’s hardware and software for horticultural lighting.
Growing Fresh Food in Outer Space

Technology solution

UI/UX research, design, and architecture

Intellias took full responsibility for the design and architecture of our client’s vertical farm lighting solution. While conducting in-depth research on user personas, our designers and engineers visited local vertical farms to observe work processes and document all requirements that may be relevant during development.

  • UI/UX design
  • Our research revealed that managers of vertical farms belong to a tech-savvy group of farmers who are already experienced with AgriTech. This led us to adopt a specific approach to web app design and suggest more comprehensive functionality. As requested by our client, we also focused on accessibility features for users with specific needs, such as weak eyesight and an inability to distinguish colors.

  • Technical design
  • Intellias engineers developed a microservices architecture for our client’s solution. The high level of flexibility offered by this architecture allowed our client to apply it both to the web solution and mobile app.
    Growing Fresh Food in Outer Space

System’s key features and capabilities

Using IoT sensors and cameras, the system can capture photos and videos of plants. Built-in artificial intelligence algorithms analyze data by matching images with a huge database. As a result, LED lighting ensures production of healthy food and efficient use of land and other resources thanks to vertical farming technologies such as:

  • Temperature, carbon dioxide, pH, and humidity measurements with automatic system adjustments to keep these measurements at desired levels
  • Automation of horticultural lighting systems to optimize climate conditions for indoor growing and ensure energy efficiency
  • AI algorithms to analyze crop statuses, including image recognition from photo and video monitoring data
  • Lighting scheduling backed by effective light recipes for timely and efficient illumination of crops and improved yields
  • An intuitive template-based user interface for farmers, which allows them to create the right conditions for specific crops

In addition to the web application, our experts designed and developed a mobile app that allows farm managers to monitor plant conditions by measuring certain parameters and applying plant image recognition technology using only their mobile devices.
Growing Fresh Food in Outer Space

Through a farmer-friendly UI, users can observe deviations in plant development and remotely adjust artificial lighting, changing light spectrums based on plant response to improve conditions for crop growth. The system also includes algorithms that can automatically adjust climate conditions within vertical farms to eliminate potential hazards to plant health. In addition, the vertical farm lighting solution covers all stages of plant growth, from seeding to maturing and blooming, adapting conditions to each stage.

Build a digital vertical farm with innovative indoor farming solutions by Intellias

Business and global outcome

Intellias successfully delivered a horticultural lighting solution enabling future-oriented farmers to build highly scalable vertical farms that can be managed, updated, and configured in just a few clicks. The solution provides growers with real-time insights into farm conditions, including temperature, humidity, ventilation, and other vital factors, and can automatically adjust lighting using AI algorithms trained on collected sensor data.

Using our client’s vertical lighting solution, farm managers can now experiment with cultivation cycle features to design the best recipes for growing specific crops under certain conditions to improve time to harvest and maximize yields. The solution can be used for vertical farms operating on skyscraper rooftops, under extreme weather conditions, and even in space.

Our client’s indoor lighting technology is paving the way to resolving some of the most pressing global challenges. Growing produce on urban vertical farms close to consumers ensures a timely supply of fresh food for millions of people; cuts the need for transportation, reducing carbon emissions; and drives down food prices. Additionally, the confined environments of digital farms minimize the risk of diseases and pests while eliminating the use of agrochemicals. These farms use energy and other resources efficiently and can operate year-round, regardless of the season or weather conditions. With AI and automation, farming operations are effectively optimized, allowing for sustainable food production.

Using smart horticultural lighting technology, NASA is now revolutionizing food production by bringing crop cultivation to outer space. This will enable space crews to harvest fresh produce during space flights and aboard the International Space Station, potentially ensuring vital sustenance for astronauts on extended missions to the Moon or Mars.

100%

controlled environment

60%

energy savings

24/7/365

crop monitoring and care

How can we help you?

Get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from you.

    I give consent to the processing of my personal data given in the contact form above as well as receiving commercial and marketing communications under the terms and conditions of the Intellias Privacy Policy.

    We use cookies to bring best personalized experience for you.
    By clicking “Accept” below, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookie Policy

    Thank you for your message.
    We will get back to you shortly.