Customizable Platform for Autonomous Agriculture Research

当今全球面临的最大挑战之一是粮食短缺。在气候变化的影响下，获得可耕地越来越困难，迫切需要在有效的农业实践领域进行创新。这一领域的主流策略之一是小规模垂直农业。随着强大的自主系统技术的出现，自动化农业的新方法——在小规模垂直农场环境中——已经成熟，可以进行创新并对现实世界产生影响。该提案旨在将两个强大的研究领域——进化计算和自动化规划——引入到自主农业的设置中。通过将室内垂直农场可用的传感器和执行器的范围（分别）视为自主系统的环境和能力，我们将能够探索如何利用现代人工智能技术在受控环境中优化作物产量。该方案的首要目标是利用现代室内农业技术，尽可能多地感知和控制环境的各个方面，从而充分探索这一环境。我们提出了一个统一的平台，它有16个独立的可控种植区域，用于室内水培农业。所有这些都将有一个共享的水和营养系统，但隔离的生长环境将允许自动化控制实验。该平台是与女王垂直农场团队合作和协商设计的，该团队在构建室内垂直农场解决方案方面已经建立了专业知识。拟议的支出用于平台所需的组件，并将代表自主农业的独一无二的研究测试平台。该平台将用于突出女王大学计算机学院两个研究项目的研究。每年大约有45个HQP可以直接访问垂直农场进行研究，全球无数其他HQP将有机会探索作为平台常规操作的结果而产生的数据集-在许可的学术许可下发布数据是该项目的目标。该平台将允许现有的各种HQP团队展示他们的研究，并为学生提供非常有竞争力的自主系统工作技能；鉴于对自主农业专业知识的需求不断增长，以满足全球对这一领域解决方案的需求，这一点尤为重要。

One of the greatest challenges we face globally today is food scarcity. Amplified by the impact of climate change, access to cultivatable land is increasingly difficult, and there is an obvious and immediate need for innovation in the space of effective agricultural practices. One of the prevailing strategies in this space is the area of small-scale vertical farming. With the advent of powerful autonomous system technology, new methods for automated agriculture - on the small-scale vertical farm setting - is ripe for innovation and real-world impact. This proposal aims to bring two powerful research areas - evolutionary computing and automated planning - to the setting of autonomous agriculture. By viewing the range of possible sensors and actuators available for indoor vertical farms as an autonomous system's environment and capabilities (respectively), we will be able to explore how modern artificial intelligence techniques can be leveraged to optimize crop yield in a controlled environment. An overarching aim of the proposal is to enable the full exploration of this setting by having as many aspects of the environment sensed and controlled as possible with modern indoor farming technology. We are proposing a single unified platform that has sixteen individually controllable growing zones for indoor aquaponics farming. All will have a shared water and nutrient system, but the isolated growing environments will allow for controlled experimentation in automation. The platform has been designed in collaboration and consultation with the Queen's Vertical Farm Team, which has established expertise in constructing indoor vertical farm solutions. The proposed expenditures are for the components necessary for the platform and would represent a one-of-a-kind research testbed for autonomous agriculture. The platform will be used to highlight the research of two research programs at Queen's University in the School of Computing. Roughly 45 HQP yearly will have direct access to conduct research with the vertical farm, and countless others globally will have the opportunity to explore the datasets produced as a result of the regular operation of the platform - releasing the data under a permissive academic licence is an objective of the project. The platform will allow the existing diverse HQP teams to exhibit their research and provide students with a very competitive skillset of working with autonomous systems; all the more crucial given the growing demand for autonomous agriculture expertise to address the global need for solutions in this space.