IIT Ropar’s ‘Centre of Excellence in AI for Digital Agriculture’ (ANNAM.AI) has launched a digital learning platform named ‘AVNI-Grow with Nature.’ It is designed to enable children to learn about plants, crops, food items, and farming through their immediate surroundings. By combining artificial intelligence (AI) with hands-on activities, this web and mobile application assists children in recognising and comprehending their environment.
Children can explore various crops, fruits, vegetables, spices, grains, and millets on this platform. For instance, a child can use the app while observing a plant, fruit, or crop and access detailed information about it using AI-based recognition technology. The objective is to connect the objects children encounter in their daily lives with fundamental knowledge about farming and food.
AVNI app, developed by a team at IIT Ropar, is available in both Hindi and English and includes audio content for young children
The AVNI app, developed by a team at IIT Ropar, is available in both Hindi and English and includes audio content for young children. It features daily challenges, a digital ‘Nature Book‘, a ‘Nature Gallery’, and a ‘Crop Compare’ tool. With the help of these features, children can record what they learn, discover various types of plants, and compare different crops.
IIT Ropar has stated that this app is designed to provide children with information about farming, enabling them to learn about the subject even before beginning formal studies on it. Rather than just reading facts, this platform focuses on visual learning. Kids can look at their environment, recognise trees, plants, and crops, and slowly build a foundational knowledge of agriculture and nature.
AVNI has been developed by Dr Mukesh Saini, Co-Project Director of ANNAM.AI at IIT Ropar. This initiative forms part of ANNAM.AI’s endeavour to apply AI within agriculture and education.
The institute states that the platform is free, ad-free, and privacy-focused. It is tailored for children to ensure a safe, age-appropriate digital learning space.
ANNAM.AI is working on an AI-driven digital public infrastructure for Indian farming. AVNI takes this effort further into education. It uses AI not just to share facts, but to help kids learn about agriculture by seeing and exploring things first-hand. The goal of this program is to build agricultural awareness in children from a young age. This includes learning about the plants near them, the food they eat, and how farming helps grow that food.
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