Objectives With the full completion of BeiDou satellite navigation system (BDS), the agriculture in China has entered a new era of innovation. This paper aims to explore the development pathways of smart unmanned farm, and addresses the major demands of agricultural development in China, including green and low-carbon, cost-saving and benefit-increasing, automatic and intelligent.
Methods This paper proposes an innovative framework for constructing BeiDou smart unmanned farms by fusion of BDS and remote sensing technologies. The concept, technical features, and system structure are defined from four dimensions, including integration, precision, automation, and intelligence. Furthermore, four key technologies are discussed, including multi-dimensional data acquisition across space, air, and ground, accurate sensing and monitoring of crop condition, intelligent decision-making and precise management, and fully unmanned agricultural machinery operations. The system integration method characterized by intelligent evolution is also introduced.
Results The framework was implemented in the demonstration project of BeiDou smart unmanned farm 1.0 in Zouping City, Shandong Province. Field experiments confirmed the feasibility of the integrated system in achieving real-time monitoring, prescription generation, and unmanned mechanized operations. The integrated system demonstrated the improvements in production efficiency by reducing labor input, lowering production costs, and enhancing the precision of input management. It also enabled a closed-loop management from data acquisition to analysis, decision and execution, laying the groundwork for scalable applications.
Conclusions The development of BeiDou smart unmanned farms offers the transformative potential for Chinese agriculture by ensuring food security and supporting sustainable development. By integrating BDS and remote sensing technologies into a unified intelligent farming framework, the proposed system enhances cost-effectiveness, yield stability, resource efficiency, and ecological sustainability. The demonstration in Zouping City highlights the broader applicability of the proposed system, and provides a replicable and scalable model for the next generation of smart agriculture systems in China.
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