Setting up a Digital Twin Assisted Greenhouse Architecture

Abstract

The present article contains a study about utilizing the Digital Twins concept in the field of contemporary agricultural production. Through this study, an exemplary architecture has been developed regarding the conversion of a conventional greenhouse to a digital greenhouse. A digital greenhouse modus operandi features a great number of advantages compared with the traditional workflow in a conventional greenhouse. The purpose of the work is to propose tools for assisting the possible reduction of the consumption of the used resources for the crops. This requires the application of automation of tools for cultivation such as Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). The article shows that the Digital Twins concept can immensely contribute towards controlling the agricultural environment and at the same time improve performance and quality while reducing the consumption of resources for a variety of crops. The proposed workflow starts by identifying the parameters that need to be taken into account and finally proposes several cyber and physical tools for setting up a Digital Twin for the case of a greenhouse. The objective of this study was the development of a DT architecture that would be able to optimize productivity in the context of CEA applications.

Digital Twins in Agriculture: Orchestration and Applications

“…Data can be stored either in the cloud or in a local server, as this is the DT “source of intelligence”, including (i) internal atmospheric conditions as well as external conditions to allow proper balance and interactions, as well as historic previous conditions and treatments (actions taken), (ii) the cloud should be able to receive real-time data constantly regarding (also) crop development, having stored data about previous development, and (iii) a data set of possible treatments and solutions, Figure . These data must be available by AI to model, predict, and suggest actions based on the new received data …”

“…These data must be available by AI to model, predict, and suggest actions based on the new received data. 93 4.4.2.2. Digital Displays for Greenhouse DTs.…”

3D and 4D Printing as Integrated Manufacturing Methods of Industry 4.0

“…Consumers may now personalize objects using easy web-based design software and order their own customized products, made out of a 3D printer. The emergence of the digital twin's concept assists in this context (Kantaros et al, 2022b;Piromalis and Kantaros, 2022;Kantaros and Piromalis, 2022;Debroy et al, 2017;Mukherjee and DebRoy, 2019).…”

Correlation between the part quality, strength and surface roughness of material extrusion process

“…Material extrusion (MEX), specifically filament extrusion, emerges as the oldest 3D printing technology, used for fabricating prototypes from computer-aided design (CAD) models using materials like acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) (Wick-Joliat et al , 2022). Filament extrusion of ABS material, in particular, has gained widespread use owing to the material's balance of strength, durability and cost-effectiveness (Chen and Smith, 2021; Kantaros et al , 2023). In the era of Industry 4.0 revolution, along with other 3D printing technologies, the MEX process has been improved to handle various materials e.g.…”