Research area
Smart greenhouses and plant factories, and sensing the plant itself: gas exchange, impedance, spectroscopy and electrical signals.
Overview
Indoor farming is our most active area. It starts with the growing environment, VPD-based greenhouse control, edge computing, lighting and aeroponics, and is moving towards reading the plant directly through its gas exchange, impedance, spectrum and electrical signals.
Our approach
Every project starts in the field: we sense what is happening, model what it means, and turn the result into decisions farmers and operators can act on.
Why it matters
What we do
Center projects
14 projects from the center's research portfolio. Open a slide to see the system, the setup and the results.
A tropical smart greenhouse with temperature, humidity, radiation, CO2 and soil moisture sensing, coolers, humidifiers, microsprayers, pumps and exhaust fans, a local server and edge nodes over MQTT, the cloud and a multiplatform dashboard.
Node-RED, an MQTT broker and a local database keep data capture and control running in real time when the internet connection is limited.
Multi-node monitoring hardware and software that drives an evaporative air cooler to hold the greenhouse in the ideal vapour pressure deficit zone.
A mobile app for temperature, humidity, camera views and a forum, designed with design thinking: empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test.
LED grow-light racks, nutrient tanks, dosing pumps and water sensors on the local and global subsystem with a remote dashboard. The main facility for many undergraduate to doctoral studies.
A system that captures plant bioelectrical signals to assess physiological health in indoor farming.
Student research
3 undergraduate theses, 2 master's theses, 1 doctoral research supervised at the center, with their methods, key results and research framework.
Gas exchange (LI-6800) every ten minutes from 07:00 to 17:00 on three days, with microclimate logging, to predict stomatal conductance without a LI-COR instrument.
In practice
Related publications
Other research
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