Augmented Reality in the Integrative Internet of Things (AR-IoT): Application for Precision Farming
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have improved significantly the paper, and better framed how their AR-based approach fits under precision agriculture and IoT. They still do not explain exactly the IoT aspect (Figure 16 is quite helpful though), i.e. which technologies/protocols/communication/sensors etc. of IoT would be used or have been used. It would be nice also to show the acceptance and usefulness of their approach in a real-world setting, i.e. a farm or agricultural farm, indicating which problems does this approach solve, and how convenient/realistic it is for the farmers/users to employ an AR-based technique for their farming operations.
Author Response
Response the reviewer 1 comments (Blue Font Color)
Comments and Suggestions:
The authors have improved significantly the paper, and better framed how their AR-based approach fits under precision agriculture and IoT. They still do not explain exactly the IoT aspect (Figure 16 is quite helpful though), i.e. which technologies/protocols/communication/sensors etc. of IoT would be used or have been used. It would be nice also to show the acceptance and usefulness of their approach in a real-world setting, i.e. a farm or agricultural farm, indicating which problems does this approach solve, and how convenient/realistic it is for the farmers/users to employ an AR-based technique for their farming operations.
Reply:
Thank you very much for the reviewer’s comments and suggestions. We have thoroughly checked the manuscript for grammatical errors.
In the subsection 3.2 “Things and Communication”, we have added the technology that have been used to validate the simple case study (page 4, lines 165-167).
For a real-world setting, efforts have been made to thoroughly revise (Figure 9, 10, 13, 16, and 17).
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Good Job with your work! There are few changes I will recommend.
More concept of proof in Introduction to link it with the the case study will help to make connection with the readers.
It will be good to see application of case study visualization ( in the manuscript) promoting sustainability in some factual (some sort of quantitative data analysis) form (Table, text) how it can add to future lead studies besides simple case study in the manuscript. It will be a great point in discussion and conclusion.
Overall good work! It is great proof of concept for future application study.
Author Response
Response the reviewer 2 comments (Red Font Color)
Comments and Suggestions:
Good Job with your work! There are few changes I will recommend.
More concept of proof in Introduction to link it with the case study will help to make connection with the readers.
It will be good to see application of case study visualization ( in the manuscript) promoting sustainability in some factual (some sort of quantitative data analysis) form (Table, text) how it can add to future lead studies besides simple case study in the manuscript. It will be a great point in discussion and conclusion.
Overall good work! It is great proof of concept for future application study.
Reply:
Thank you very much for the reviewer’s comments and suggestions. We have thoroughly checked the manuscript for grammatical errors.
In the Introduction section, we have added more concept of proof in the paper (page 2, lines 53-55 and 57-59).
The accompanying text and quantitative data analysis are added on page 11-12, lines 294 - 321.
How quantitative data analysis can add to future lead studies besides simple case study are added on page 14, lines 385 – 388.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a much improved version of the manuscript. The authors have obviously put much effort in improving their work, plus they added a more meaningful user study to evaluate the usefulness of their approach. The statistical test needs some more explanation, i.e. which exactly the testing hypothesis is. I find a bit strange that p-value is absolutely zero. Also, experienced farmers could have perhaps understand the plant's condition without spending time reading historical logs, right? You did not consider this in the user study, and I think it is wrong. You should at least discuss this more in the "Discussion" section.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers and Editors,
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions on the manuscript (Manuscript ID: sustainability-485121), which were very valuable and helpful for us to revise and improve it. We have read the comment carefully and efforts have been made to attend them accordingly. We hope this revised manuscript can meet your consideration for publication in Sustainability. All changes have been highlighted in blue font color. Below we have attached responses to reviewers’ comments.
Response the reviewer 1 comments (Blue Font Color)
Comments and Suggestions:
This is a much improved version of the manuscript. The authors have obviously put much effort in improving their work, plus they added a more meaningful user study to evaluate the usefulness of their approach. The statistical test needs some more explanation, i.e. which exactly the testing hypothesis is. I find a bit strange that p-value is absolutely zero. Also, experienced farmers could have perhaps understand the plant's condition without spending time reading historical logs, right? You did not consider this in the user study, and I think it is wrong. You should at least discuss this more in the "Discussion" section.
Reply:
Thank you very much for the reviewer’s comments and suggestions. The authors are grateful for the comment.
We have thoroughly checked the manuscript for grammatical errors.
As per the reviewer’s comments, we have added the testing hypothesis (page 12, lines 318-320), and p-value have been improved (page 12, line 322).
We agree with the comment of the reviewer and the suggestion has been. The accompanying discussion has been added in the “Discussion” section (page 14, lines 370-376).
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This work introduces the problem of how to improve agriculture by means
of using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies together with Augmented
Reality (AR). The authors present related works in both fields, the IoT
and the AR.
The contribution of this work is to make an study of how to employ AR to
interact with IoT devices measuring and actuating on plants. The aim of
the study is to improve the sensorial perception and understanding of
the current state of the plant by superimposing virtual objects like
tables or figures to the picture of the plant.
Another contribution of this work is a Framework AR-IoT to employ AR
technologies to interact with IoT devices for the purpose the study.
The approach of the authors is tested with real life objects and
hardware, which is very welcomed and proves the authors know-how in this
regard.
This reviewer found the following issues with the work that should be
addressed before publication:
- 1 -
The level of english is not adequuate. The text has numerous grammar and
spelling errors. Also, The text contains numerous short paragraphs of
3-5 lines, or sentences too long (3-4 lines), .e.g the sentence in line
121 is too long. This reviewer suggest the authors to contact a native
english speaker to revise the text.
- 2 -
The Introduction needs work to introduce better the problem that the
authors are trying to address. From the reader standpoint, the problem
referenced in the Introduction is not addressed in the methodology and
results.
Additionally, The sentence in line 30, and the paragraph in line 39 make numerous
important claims without citing the proper sources to land that
foundation. Those sections need to be correctly cited with appropriate
sources.
- 3 -
The related work is clearly divided in groups. First, the authors
cite numerous works related to IoT and agriculture. Then, the authors cite
works related to AR and different verticals. This approach is not as
helpful as it should be. This is, the paragraphs seem to be very
disconnected and independent. The authors approach is based on the mix
of three key fields: (i) AR, (ii) IoT, and (iii) agriculture, but the
the related work should reflect how those three elements mix together
with each other, citing the advancements and state of the art in this
regard.
- 4 -
The methodology takes way too much paper space in contrast with the rest
of the work, and also does not sufficiently clarify the aspects
related to how the data from the IoT end-devices is managed or updated
when the user interacts with the virtual objects.
The authors need to clarify better how the IoT end-devices interact
with the user AR device, either in a data-base or how that data is
managed to monitor the plant.
The framework is vaguely described, and the authors need to address what
sets appart the proposed framework from already existing approaches and
solutions, either in the related work or in the introduction.
Overall, the methodology is way too focused in the AR field, while the
abstract, title and introduction claim it to be much more
multidisciplinar with more focus on IoT and Agriculture. This disparity
must be corrected by the authors.
- 5 -
Figure 13. should start the y-axis on 0.00 not 0.33. This distorts the
data.
- 6 -
Figure 14. is hard to understand and from the reader standpoint, it is
not clear what should I get from the pictures. The authors need to
clarify much better in the text what the pictures are depicting and why
it is relevant for the purpose of the work..
- 7 -
Overall, the authors should explain better the positive impact of their
approach to improve the cognitive understanding
------
If the authors address all the points described above, this reviewer
suggest the paper for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
First of all, I would like to mention that the general idea of the paper is really interesting. Nowadays, the use of Augmented Reality in Internet of Things and especially in agriculture is needed. It would be great to extend this work with real environment evaluation and real data integration.
I just have a few comments.
1- For the abstract, it would be better if you give a better idea about the realized work in the paper. Also, some modifications are required. For example, in line 12: The paper introduces ... must be modified. In line 15: '... applied for plant monitoring' would be better. In line 20: '.... to updating farming management ........' should be modified.
2- In the introduction, line 34: the visible should be replaced with visibility problem.
3- In the related work, the addition of existing works on AR-IoT in agriculture to compare with would be greatly welcomed.
4- Figures 1, 2, 4, 8 10, and 11 should be placed after they are referred to in the paragraph.
5- line 123: ..... is 'respected'..
6- First part of lines 140 and 146 should be revised.
7- line 155: .. 'matrix'..
8- line 175: 'The needs of ......' can be approved.
9- Figure 5: ........ The overall mean reprojection error was 0.15,.... No? And can the theoretical expectation values be presented along with results?
10- The results section can be improved. Is it possible to add results for bigger distances? Also, Figure 14 is not well presented and described.
11- In the conclusion, the realized work's results should be mentioned. line 293 should be revised.
Thanks for considering my comments!
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper presents a nice implementation of an augmented reality system, explaining its technical characteristics, design decisions made, and calibration processes.
I believe this paper should be submitted to a journal relevant to augmented reality, because its relationship with IoT and agriculture is very limited. There is no connection to IoT, while only some diagram and a photo of a plant relate to an agricultural scenario.
Good description of related work. Literature review misses this important IoT-based framework for smart agriculture:
Andreas Kamilaris, Feng Gao, Francesc X. Prenafeta-Boldú and Muhammad Intizar Ali. Agri-IoT: A Semantic Framework for Internet of Things-enabled Smart Farming Applications. In Proc. of the IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), Reston, VA, USA, December 2016.
Reviewer 4 Report
The reserch sounds very interesting, but i'm not sure if it is the scope of this Journal.
In addition, I have some suggestions for the authors:
The paper does not describe any improvement about the techniques related. The paradigm AR-IoT described in the paper is not apply in any agronomy application. May be the paper would be better with more results (the results point is very poor)
The research presented can be greatly improved with results where the usefulness of mixing agronomic data with augmented reality can be demonstrated. The positioning of an object and the measurement of the error is not consider to be too relevant.
IoT techniques in agriculture are very useful due to the measuring distribution without wires and obviously the energy requirements must be very low in order to use autonomous power. DO you consider that multi-camera vision and processing could be used with this low power mode?
IoT techniques require a critical use of data for communication pourposes. Thus in the paper it must be discussed in order to use this paradigm as an appropiate tool in agriculture
In summary, this work should be revised in order to include those aspects that justify the use of this paradigm in agronomic applications of IoT.
