Research Assistant, Institute of Information Science (IIS), Academia Sinica
Bio-Industrial Mechatronics (BIME), National Taiwan University
PLANT FACTORY IOT
Bachelor Thesis, June 2016.
Publication ISMAB 2016.
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The Plant Factory is an indoor, hermetic cultivation environment. Compared to greenhouses, plant factories are more intensive from both resource and land utilization aspects.
Cultivation spaces are stacked vertically, therefore reducing not only land usage but also water consumption. More over, crops are isolated from outdoor environments, eliminating effects from climate conditions, pests or contamination.
We developed an IoT-based cloud service system serving as a community for plant factory farmers and cultivation / engineering experts. With the system, services and information can be shared and used effectively among collaborators or business partners.
Modern plant factory cultivation facilities.
My oral presentation at the ISMAB 2016 conference.
Modern plant factory cultivation facilities.
THE PLANT FACTORY INDUSTRY
Food demand dramatically increases with the growth of worldwide population. However, due to extreme climate conditions caused by global warming, it is certain that traditional agriculture techniques will face more challenges. A highly controlled indoor artificial environment like plant factory reduces water consumption and also guarantees steady harvest of crops with consistent quality, dependent of outdoor climate conditions.
The plant factory industry can be roughly divided into following categories.
BUSINESS MANAGERS
For those who actually engage in managing or utilizing plant factory to fulfill their needs, the goals are to increase the efficiency and flexibility of supply chains in food production.
With provided services, plant factory managers could benefit from integrated expert knowledge.
CULTIVATION EXPERTS
Experts of crop cultivating, operation and suppliers of facilities required in the plant factory industrial, are known as the service providers.
Via the developed system, they can share quantized or parameterized cultivation information with collaborators.
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS
To test out different cultivation environment conditions or nutrient formulas, experimental platforms could be used to carry out experiments on a small amount of plants.
OVERVIEW
My contribution in this project is the integration between the database and experimental platform.
1. Environmental parameters are obtained from monitoring cultivation environments, and recording environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, lumination...) periodically.
2. For the experimental group (small-scaled cultivation facility), cultivation environments could be reproduced taking advantage of previously stored environmental parameters. For experimental purposes, modified cultivation environments could be created instead.
3. Environmental regulation techniques are applied to control plants in the experimental platform, in order to create desired cultivation environment (targets). Regulation is based on feedback control.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
1. The service platform and database are constructed on a PC (server). The mass productive plant factory (control group) and the experimental platform have access to the database via service.
2. Client machines on each facility are constructed on Raspberry Pi 3. Services (communication between client and server, or between client and microcontroller) are implemented with Python 3.
3. For the control group, environmental parameters are recorded periodically. Arduino Mega is used to process sensor data and sending them to the client machine. Data will be stored in the server.
4. For the experimental group, the environment will be regulated based on targets. Regulation strategies are implemented on Arduino Mega. Based on real-time sensor data, feedback control is applied to actuate a set of control plants to regulate the environment.
SERVICE MANAGEMENT
The server database is constructed using MySQL. SSH and the Paramiko (Python-based connection package) is used to communicate between server and clients. All clients can be managed and monitored on the server machine.
AUTOMATION AND MECHATRONICS
This is an overview of the mechatronics system of a client facility. The client machine (Raspberry Pi 3) is connected to Arduino Mega via USB. The UART and I/O ports of Arduino Mega are then connected to the sensor and a set of relays (for control plant actuation), respectively.
Control commands are determined based on control / regulation strategies, aiming for the reproduction of ideal environmental conditions.
