DIPOL 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.

A new Erasmus+ project called “Vitalizing ICT Relevance in Agricultural Learning (VIRAL) has just started. The company Plantaže and University of Donja Gorica are partners in the consortium of the project that aims enhancement of university and business collaboration by promoting the use of information and communication technology across Western Balkans agro-communities, and to increase capacity of high education institutions with information technology. The Kick-off meeting took place in Banja Luka on 21. January 2020. More information at the following link.

Projects by DIPOL. team are listed in the Brochure of projects supported by Ministry of Science for December 2019. Project DIPOL, H2020 DEMETER and DASCAP (stipendy for PhD candidate) are listed in this latest issue of the brochure.

Representatives from the University of Donja Gorica and DunavNET participated in a panel discussion in company „13. jul Plantaže“ that took place in Plantaže’s wine cellar Šipčanik. The discussion covered perspectives and directions for new developments in the company. Digital transformation was one of main topics in the discussion. We had a chance to inform all the participants and stakeholders about history of collaboration between UDG, DunavNET and Plantaže. We also covered current activities on DIPOL and H2020 DEMETER projects, and gave our ideas and suggestions for future work

Another major milestone achieved in the domain of sustainability of DIPOL project. As a result of our partnership development and submitting new proposals, we won a grant award for a PHD scholarship for mr. Stevan Šandi for the project called “DASCAP – Data Science with Applications” that will be sponsored by the Ministry of Science of Montenegro. Within this project, mr Šandi will be doing his PhD research in mastering methods and techniques of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring their application to various use cases and data sets. One such use case will be the application of ML and AI in agriculture. According to the project plan, it is expected that mr. Šandi will spent some time within partner institutions in Serbia and Spain and do his PhD work in the realm of real industry applications. More info at the link.

The Cooperation agreement between the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, University of Donja Gorica, and the small winery “Rajković” from Ubli, 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 well known vineyard and the wine cellar of Rajković family have a long tradition. The vineyard is located in the village of Ubli. The plan is to use this site for precise viticulture pilot of the DIPOL project for testing the latest IoT technology for precise viticulture and evaluate benefits for small wine producers in the region.

Team members from FIST-UDG visited with our partner, DunavNET from Nov Sad, Serbia on November 6-7. The main goal of the visit was getting acquainted with AgroNET platform’s API functions and needed customization. An initial result of this process is a web applications that demonstrates real-time and historical data API interconnection with AgroNET accessing DIPOL pilots data.

During their visit to Serbia, two of our young researchers also attended the Wonderlan AI Summit that took place in Belgrade, November 8th. Wonderland AI Summit is one of the most innovative Artificial Intelligence conference in Europe. This is the place where some of the best AI practitioners share tools, methods and practices helping companies and academia understanding the importance of AI today and what ind of value it can give back. Learn more about the conference at: link.

On 7. November 2019, company Plantaže and University of Donja Gorica organized invited Dr Zoran G. Cerović to give a talk titled “Optical Sensors in Precision Viticulture and Sustainable Agriculture”. Dr Cerovic is a Research Fellow in Laboratory for Ecology, Systematics and Evolution, ESE CNRS, Orsay, France. The presentation took place at the University of Donja Gorica in front of the audience of almost 100 people, mostly students, who had a chance to learn about the latest trends related to the use of optical sensors and advanced technologies in precision viticulture and agriculture.

Project partners, Faculty for information systems and technologies and DunavNET, organized a semi-annual project progress meeting that took place on October 18, 2019. Team members went over the main results of the project accompished in the first 6 months. Ms Senka Gajinov and dr Srdjan Krčo from DunavNET peresented features of the customized AgroNET platform currently installed and configured for DIPOL pilots companies Plantaže in Podgorica and Naše voće in Nikšić. Dr Krćo presented details of the new H2020 DEMETER project, which just started in September. Meeting was attended by the representatives of industry partners.

The discussion also included main deliverable achieved in the past period, which will be reported in the semi-annual project report. Activities related to the involvement of master students, the upcoming meetings, and immediate action items were discussed, as well. We also discussed candidates for potential additional pilot test sites.