Development of Actuation Framework for Agricultural Informatization Supporting System

Agriculture faces many challenges in the production system, such as climate and weather, field conditions, crop types, soils types and conditions, and so on. Farmers consider many aspects to optimize the “on-farm” process by their long-term experiences. Various informatization agricultural supporting systems have been developed using ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to improve agricultural productivity. Authors have developed the ICT-based agricultural supporting system called the “Agri-eye” in which a field monitoring, crop growth and quality evaluation, work recording, and online data offering and sharing sub-systems were incorporated. On the other hand, an actuation sub-system for controlling and managing agricultural facilities in a greenhouse such as a heater, water pumps, circulation fans, a CO2 generator, etc. has been introduced. In this study, an actuation framework is developed as a useful method for monitoring and controlling local facilities and machineries. The method can be used for controlling particular device with adjusting parameter from Agri-eye server to meet the cultivation requirement. Furthermore, the validity of the developed framework was verified to monitor and control air temperature in laboratory test box.