Catalogue of Services

This service concerns training AI models on behalf of the customer for a specific task and optimisation objective, e.g., improving accuracy on crop classification from image data.

The target model is the solution provided by the customer that needs to be enhanced with respect to a set of predetermined features to reach the desired performance level. However, if required, the training can also be applied to additional state-of-the-art models available in the market for benchmarking purposes.

If not defined by the customer, some features of the training process can be identified via service S00179 (desk assessment activities for digital systems and/or data): for instance, model features to improve, reference model baselines to include in the performance comparison, as well as benchmark datasets.

The data used for training the model can be either provided by the customer or annotated ad hoc as a preparatory activity to model training (via service S00290 – Data labelling); another possibility is that data are retrieved among reference benchmark datasets that are openly available. We will also agree with customers on the level of hardware acceleration required, based on the considered AI models, e.g., GPU acceleration via connection to a remote server vs on-device training.

In order to train, test, and validate AI applications, annotated datasets are needed. Wageningen Research - Field Crops can provide FAIR datasets consisting of high-quality raw images, annotations, and metadata on crops, weeds, diseases, and pests. At the moment a dataset on volunteer potato in sugar beet and onion is available. Let us know in which other datasets you are interested.

Data interoperability in the agrifood sector hinders innovation and development due to the need for many custom solutions to share data. This service helps agricultural organisations improve how they handle and share data across the entire food value chain. By implementing standardised reference data models like rmAgro (https://rmagro.org), we help to optimise your data flows and make your information systems work better together. Our team at Wageningen Research provides expert guidance in data modelling and implements reference models that align with industry standards and tests the reference models against various use cases. This promotes more efficient data sharing between different systems and organisations, reducing data integration challenges and improving operational efficiency. The service is particularly valuable for organisations looking to modernise their data infrastructure or needing to share data more effectively with partners in the agri-food sector. This service provides an assessment of interoperability for AI-driven solutions within the agri-food sector. The service facilitates conformance testing and verification of whether the related IT systems comply with relevant standards, guidelines, data space regulations, and other interoperability requirements. By evaluating the IT systems against established reference data models and frameworks like rmAgro (https://rmagro.org), the service ensures that it meets the necessary criteria for effective data sharing and integration. Wageningen Research leverages its expertise to evaluate the overall AI solution on its quality, performance, and how well it aligns with industry standards, offering insights and recommendations for improvement. This service supports organisations in ensuring their solutions are interoperable, compliant, and ready for seamless integration within the agri-food value chain.

WUR and Agro-Innovation Centre De Marke have extensive knowledge of the dairy market developments in the Netherlands and Western Europe. They are able to advise customers of these market trends, can do specific market research, and can support doing a proper business model analysis for the specific knowledge. We have dedicated business developers and a large group of specialists on the team. Additionally, the large farmers network of Agro-Innovation Centre De Marke can be used to organise feedback sessions with end-users and their dealers. 

Provision of practical and scientifically based input and collaboration in designing robotic AI systems and components for livestock farming solutions.
 

Receive practical and scientific input for the (re)design of sensors and robotics; help with decision support on dairy farms that meet agro-ecological F2F criteria, located in Hengelo Gld. and Leeuwarden.
Access to high-end end-users in a country takes lots of time and effort. Thanks to the multiple regional experimental farms, Wageningen Research has a wide and easily accessible farm and dealer network. Additionally, researchers at Wageningen Livestock Research have a practical approach and know what's needed and required to implement new technologies in farms, therefore fulfilling a bridge between agronomy, technology, and ecology. By testing and demonstrating the products or services to our farm managers and farm networks in specific regions, we can gather valuable feedback and help speed up the developmental stage of the tested prototypes. 

One of the key activities during digital testing is the collection of data concerning the progression and the final outcome of the tests. Such data enable the evaluation of system performance by the customer or – if needed – by agrifoodTEF (via Service S00184). This service manages the collection of data relevant to performance evaluation produced during the tests by both the system under test and the computational environment where the tests take place.

Examples of collected data comprise information produced within a virtual environment to simulate sensor data collection in a physical environment; statistics about AI model performance in the test and deployment phase (e.g., occupied memory, number of trainable parameters, training/optimisation loss, etc.); specific labels and annotations to use as ground truth for evaluating the system; and system output when subjected to a range of test conditions.  

The minimum set of data to be collected is defined by the evaluation metrics that the user chose (either on their own or with agrifoodTEF support, via Service S00178) to process them; generally, a larger set of data wrt the minimum is selected by agrifoodTEF together with the customer to provide a richer view of the system’s performance and to enable the application of other metrics in the future, if needed.

As an output of the service, in addition to the raw data, we also provide the customer with documentation describing logged features and conditions of the testing environment at the time of testing, as well as any parameter values, variation ranges and specifics required for reproducibility purposes.

Through this service, we offer dedicated technical systems (hardware and software) and expertise for the collection of relevant data during testing.

The scope of data collected can range from data generated by the AgrifoodTEF technical infrastructure (e.g., through the installation of IoT sensors) to the collection of data generated by the system under test to the generation of ground truth for evaluating the system. If necessary, service S00111 may be leveraged to take care of the interconnection between AgrifoodTEF data collection systems and the customer’s systems.

In addition to the raw collected data, we will also provide customers with complete documentation describing the logged features and conditions of the testing environment at the time of testing, as well as any parameter values, variation ranges and specifics required for reproducibility purposes.

Where necessary, data collection and documentation activities can require the involvement of field experts (e.g., engineers, agronomists).

Note: annotation and labelling of collected data, if needed, can be provided via service S00115.

WUR experts are available for analysis or advice to extract information from large and multiple-source data sets as provided with the service “Provision of specific and long-term data sets for arable and livestock farming data from the Farm of the Future experimental farms (S00132).”
It is also possible to analyse datasets of clients that are used for the development of sensors, AI, and robotic solutions. 

This service concerns the curation of ground truth annotations for testing and experimentation data. More specifically, data labelling concerns the association of portions of data (e.g., image regions) to descriptions that provide information about the significance of those portions. In particular, labelling is required whenever the data are meant to be used for model training.

We also provide labelling services for domain-specific data attributes, such as disease indicators and their confounding factors, by experts in agronomy. The labelled data will be accompanied by a report synthesising quality metrics and statistics like the number of data points annotated, percentage of the full set covered for the annotations, number of annotators and the inter-annotator agreement.

Through this service, we offerers the ability to validate and augment the data collected during the different testing phases. Examples of operations that this service can provide include quality checks (e.g., presence of all datastreams, presence of drop-outs, technical quality such as focus or exposure of camera images, agronomic significance of data); preparation for performance evaluation (e.g., identification of the images containing selected visual markers or specific plants, association between images from the system under test and the ground truth); data processing (e.g., transcoding); and augmentation (e.g., generation and incorporation of metadata). Data labelling (e.g., to enable training of AI models) is not included as it is the object of a separate service (S00291).

Any test activity involves three main components, i.e.: environment (where the tests take place), protocol (defining what activities are executed and how) and evaluation metrics (used to assess the results of the tests). This service concerns the last element; its goal is to design the best metrics to evaluate the performance of digital systems such as (for instance) AI models or Computer Vision software. The digital environment and the testing protocol metrics can be designed -if required- via services S00176 and S00177. 

Our team will identify and define with customers the most adequate set of quantitative metrics to assess the outcome of the digital testing activities. In order to ensure the relevance of the metrics with respect to the real-world use cases, the team will involve engineers and agronomists.  

The metrics will be adapted not only to the task that the digital system under test (e.g., a piece of software) is designed to perform, but also to the features of the data used for the tests. For instance, a customer that has developed a machine incorporating an AI model will be interested in testing the model on data generated by their own machine: the performance metrics will therefore need to be adapted to the specific features of those data.  

Any physical test activity involves three main components: environment (where the tests take place), protocol (defining what tests are executed and how) and evaluation metrics (used to assess the results of the tests). This service concerns the last element; its goal is to design the best metrics to evaluate the performance of a customer solution, taking into consideration the use cases specified by the customer and the environment and protocol chosen for the tests (which, if needed, can be designed via services S00106 and S00107).

Our team will identify and define with customers the most adequate set of quantitative (i.e., based on instrumental measurements) and/or qualitative (i.e., relying on expert human judgement) metrics to assess the system functionalities of interest. This phase will involve, in particular, agronomists and experts in agricultural machinery.

Based on the defined evaluation metrics, a set of requirements for the collection of required data and ground truth annotations will also be defined accordingly. For instance, the service may lay out the specifications for dedicated data collection campaigns (possibly executed via service S00113). This phase will involve engineers and experts in AI and robotics.

On request, the output of the service will include analyses on additional environmental factors than those directly tracked through the designed metrics (e.g., seasonal effects, impact of test distribution over time on results).