Akiyagri: "Akiya (Vacant house)" + "Agriculture"

Agriculture always require space to grow plants, live stocks, fish etc. Historically, rural area owns food production for urban citizens due to the restriction; however, can we find nearby space for food production? You may find that some rooms in apartments, houses and shops are left vacant. In Japan, vacant house (Akiya) rate is rapidlly increase due to aging society and estimated to be reached around 30 % in 2033. Why not leverage the vacant for self food production by citizens? We found that utilizing home equipments through smart home and IoT solutions enables effortless and efficient food production with low-cost.

What if you can make vegitables without much effort and budget in a vacant room in your home? Of course, you can consume by yourself first but the production easily overcome your demands. How do you handle leftover vegie? Sharing it to your friends will stimulate interaction in the community. Saling it to earn a bit money may turn to a sideline business. We believe that the concept "Akiyagri" can be grow to community-based food production, deliverly and sharing system operated by urban citizens.

PROTOTYPE

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Our prototype is composed by off-the-shelf products which are available in DIY shop and appliance store. It has 2 planters, a metal rack, LED lights, smart power plug, web camera and a used laptop. It can be fabricated just by assembling these components; therefore, no special skills and tools are required. The total cost is estimated to be 200 to 300 USD.

Metal rack
It is for vertically stacking planters to reduce the required space to grow plants.
Planter
The planter has water pool under the soil and water is gradually supplied to soil. Thanks to the continuous water supply, frequent water supply is not required.
LED lights
In this prototype, we use LED lights specially designed for cultivating plants; however, if you don't care energy efficiency and speed of growth much, either ordinary LED lights or fluorescent light is sufficient.
Smart power plug
Smart plug is one of the most simple solution for smart home. power supply can be controlled remotely through the internet and it has timer feature to periodically ON and OFF the connected devices. Most of the plant will be damaged under continuous exposure to strong light so LED light should be appropriately controlled by the smart plug.
Web camera and used laptop
Plant condition should be monitored remotely so an app continue taking photos periodically and upload them on cloud storage. The prototype uses web camera and Linux laptop but it can be replaced by a cheap smartphone or micro-computer board as well.
If the room has air-conditioner, lights, ventilation fan, they should be controlled remotely to adjust environmental condition. IR remote controller emulation is enabled for smart home solution and it can be used for our system.
Soil moisture sensor
In order to avoid water shortage and alert it, soil moisture sensor is installed in the planter. The sensor also has connectivity to cloud services and we can confirm the moisture level and notify when users should visit the site and recharge water in the bottom water pool.

ABOUT US

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Ryo Shigeta

Program Manager at Google. Recieved Ph.D. in 2018 through research about agricultural IoT system. Ex-Microsoft employee.

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Matthew Ishige

Ph.D. student at the University of Tokyo. Working on machine learning algorithms for soft robots.