Hearty Plant is an urban gardening model project that combines technology and agriculture, involving faculty from the Human-Centered Engineering and Computer Science major along with 10 Fulbright students. Among them, Pham Hoang Lan, a student majoring in Human-Centered Engineering, serves as the Project Lead. Lan has been dedicated to the project since its inception with fellow students and professors, and is determined to see it through to completion as a graduation project.
Originating from the “pain points”—the needs and concerns of people during the Covid-19 outbreak, including food shortages and the fear of future food insecurity—the project was developed based on the principle of automated hydroponic cultivation.
The project is an urban gardening model that integrates technology and agriculture: Plants are initially grown outside and then transferred to a cultivation system that uses a nutrient system, a mobile pump to mix nutrients, and sensors to adjust light and humidity for optimal growth. Using NFT hydroponics, the system is fully automated from the moment the plants are placed in until they are removed, requiring no manual intervention. The software for the product was developed by the team in collaboration with the university’s student club, Google Development. In the future, the project aims to collect and adjust data, utilizing artificial intelligence technology to enhance efficiency.
