Design and Development of an Intelligent Control System for Multifunctional Agricultural Simulator

Abstract

The agricultural sector is important for the economy of Pakistan because it contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, over the years local crop production has reduced which results in hefty imports of cash crops to fulfill the local needs. The main reason behind the decrease in production is the lack of appropriate utilization of pesticides, water supply, and poor quality of seeds. These parameters are known as Optimum Cultivation Factors (OCF). In Pakistan, OCFs have been supplied based on the hit and trial methods without following the standardization. To provide a proper ratio of OCFs, a simulator is designed under the approved NRPU research grant that will mimic the agricultural field's real-time environment while maintaining the temperature, humidity, and moisture content with appropriate provision of water. Under the scope of this research as a part of a funded grant, an intelligent control system for a multifunctional agriculture simulator is designed. Based on real time field values, and upon their assessment based on crop growth, fuzzy-based membership functions are designed to mimic the real environment at the lab scale. The designed system monitors and control the actuators such as water pumps for moisture, heater for temperature and sun simulator for solar irradiation control. The fuzzy cascaded designed controller will be used in the project hardware to create a pre-farming-controlled crop assessment simulator, that will test the various stages of plant development to standardize OCFs and discover any issues of growth in real fields.