Month: February 2020

DIPOL team members participated in organization and realization of a panel discussion named “Blockchain teechnology and applications” that took place on the last day of IEEE IT2020 conference held in Zabljak on 21. February 2020. The panelist were:

• Srdjan Kupresanin, BlockStruct, Vienna, Austria
• Nenad Gligoric, DunavNET, Novi Sad, Serbia
• Zoran Djikanovic, Capital Market Authority, Podgorica, Montenegro
• Djordje Kastratovic, FON, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
• Tomo Popovic (moderator), University of Donja Gorica, Podgorica, Montenegro

The panel was attended by IT2020 attendees and students. The discussion covered blockchain technology, examples of real-life projects, possibility to employ blockchain in financial and agri-food sectors in Montenegro, as well as GDPR and its relation to blockchain.

DIPOL project was featured in a special afternoon session at the IEEE 24^th International conference on Information Technology, IT2020 on 21. February, 2020. Our project was presented by the representatives from Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, UDG and DunavNET. In the same session, the initial activities of the H2020 DEMETER project were outlined as well. More about the conference at the following link.

Project DIPOL was featured in the paper “A Private Blockchain Implementation Using Multichain Open Source Platform” by A. Ismailisufi, T. Popovic, N. Gligoric, S. Radonjic, S. Sandi. More about the conference at the following link.

ABSTRACT – The impact of digital transformation is becoming visible in every aspect of our lives. Digital transformation strategies mostly rely on disruptive technologies such as Internet of Things, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Blockchain provides decentralized, immutable, and trustless database distributed across all participants and it was initially proposed as distributed ledger for digital cryptocurrency. However, besides in the finance sector, blockchain technology is considered to be a major innovation enabler in various industries. The paper describes an implementation of a private blockchain using the Multichain open source platform with possible application to agrifood use cases such as food tracking and tracing, product lifecycle management, and counterfeit prevention. Paper can be found at IEEE Xplore online repository here.

A research paper on possible use of OCR for food track and trace application named “The Use of Tesseract OCR Number Recognition for Food Tracking and Tracing” was presented at IEEE IT2020 conference. The paper was authored by S. Cakic, T. Popovic, S. Sandi, S. Krco, A. Gazivoda. More about the conference at the following link.

ABSTRACT – One of the most interesting enabling technologies for digital transformation is computer vision. Object and character recognition has already become very popular and it is used in everyday life. This research focuses on the use of computer vision to read serial numbers from wine labels in order to enable applications based on tracking and tracing of each individual wine bottle. After experimenting with several OCR tools, an open source software called Tesseract OCR engine was selected for the pilot solution. The paper discusses the implementation and image processioning that improved detection accuracy. The coding was done in the Python programming language. The solution code was tested using real-life like images of wine serial numbers. In addition, a custom built web-based evaluation tool was created and used for the interactive evaluation of the system. Paper can be found in IEEE Xplore online repository here.

The DIPOL team members visited Nase voce orchard to re-install the weather station and to perform a maintenance call on the IoT nodes. We added additional soil moisture sensors and currently all of the devices and sensors are up and running.

The Cooperation agreement between the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, University of Donja Gorica, and the small winery “ZENTA Vučinić” from Rogami near Podgorica, was signed today with the goal of developing cooperation between the private viticulture sector and academy, encouraging and supporting research, scientific and educational activities. The plan is to use this site for precise viticulture piloting within the DIPOL project for testing the latest IoT technology for precise viticulture and evaluate benefits for small wine producers in the region.

On February 14, we installed a mini pilot of precision viticulture in a private vineyard Rajković in Kuči near Podgorica. We installed an IoT based weather station, irrigation sensors and a pheromone trap. The vineyard is ran by the Rajković family that has a long history and tradition of producing Montenegrin wine.

On February 13, we installed weather station, irrigation sensors node, and digital pheromone traps at the peach orchard at the company Plantaze. This setup will constitute the foundation of the pilot for digital experimenting in peach farms in Montenegro. The sensors cover two plots of around 5 ha each.

UDG management and project team members visited Novi Sad on 5-6 february 2020. During the visit the team met with new partners, BioSense and Faculty of technology, that will collaborate with UDG on the new Centre of Excellence – FoodHub. Also, we met with representatives from our partner organization DunavNET to discuss ongoing activities, DIPOL and H2020 DEMETER, as well as to plan joint efforts relevant to new FoodHub project.

Projects DIPOL and H2020 DEMETER will be presented at the 24th International Information Technology Conference IT 2020. The conference is supported by IEEE Regional Section for Serbia and Montenegro. The conference will take place in Zabljak, Montenegro 18-22 February. The presentation “Digital transformation of agriculture and the food supply chain” is scheduled for Friday, 21 February at 17h. DIPOL team members are also participating in the organization of the panel discussion “Blockchain technology and applications” scheduled for 17:30h that same day. Learn more at: link.