Mr. Emmanuel oyo, AdEMNEA Project Co-PI in South Sudan attaining the Drone Flight Training alongside Khemis.

FINALLY, there is light at the end of a tumultuous tunnel for farmers in the northern part of South Sudan at least, according to the latest research conducted by the University of Juba revealed that the just concluded drone training and testing involved evaluating the impact of locusts, weaver birds and other pests to their food crops and fruit crops such as rice, grain, millet, mangoes and several green plants.

Reports from the farmers’ union through the Agricultural Bank of South Sudan indicated that the appearance of the locusts followed a period of extreme weather, including devastating floods hence threatening the food supply and the cropping season. In addition, the presence of weaver birds that attack the sorghum there by eating the grains just before harvest affected several regions of South Sudan bringing about food shortages in most parts of South Sudan.

In a bid to address such challenges, the University of Juba continues to conduct several studies and research particularly, partnering with Makerere University (Uganda), Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (Tanzania), University of Bergen (Norway) and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway) consequently culminating into a fully-fledged Adaptive project; Adaptive Environmental Monitoring Network of East Africa (AdEMNEA Project).

The Training Team at the University of Juba - Helping out Khemis.

Khemis Ben Lubari, a PhD student at Makerere University’s IoT-ra Lab and a staff at the University of Juba has focused on Algorithmic Optimization for Data Transmission Scheduling and Flight Path for drones in Agricultural Sensor Networks. One of his immediate Applications is – the use of remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft (UAV/Drones) that carry sensors and other communication equipment to help monitor the availability of locusts and other pests affecting crops.

Several features are used to record videos of infested or damage fruits on the trees. “If we are to record such a video, we have to enable the object avoidance feature on the drone to avoid catastrophe and allow the drone to maneuver its way around the fruits without colliding with the trees and record the videos,” Khemis remarks.

“We ensure the batteries and the remote controller (base stations) are fully charged, in the fields we remove the control sticks from the storage and screw them into place on the remote controller. We then unfold the antennas of the remote controller as well as the drone’s propellers. We power the remote controller first then the drone. The drone is fully connected to the base station (flight controller) when the lights change from red to blue,” he added.

The tech-savvy and PhD student revealed that flying a drone/UAV required Internet connection in order to activate the remote controller and following the screen prompts. With reference to the University of Juba that lied between four to six kilometres from Juba International Airport and further reported that specific settings must be adhered to for instance, the flight height of one hundred meters followed by selection of the flight mode.

NEXT PLANS.

Khemis says further development of algorithm that run on top of the existing algorithms is required in order to attain the desired results. He plans to revisit Juba as part of his study and establish whether the drone can see other signals apart from the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi signals between itself and the flight controller.

Dr. Julianne Sansa-Otim the principal Investigator of the AdEMNEA project at Makerere and also one of Khemis’ supervisor, delightfully expressed that this study has potential to empower farming communities with much needed information to guide decision-making such as whether or not to spray pesticides or fertilizers which directly correlate with profitability of agriculture and food security.

“Khemis’ technical contribution to the Adaptive Environment monitoring network will lead to more optimised flight paths and data schedules from ground sensors to the drones. This is critical capacity building in drone technology within the East African region.” Dr. Julianne said.