Plant Factory: A New Playground of Industrial Communication and Computing

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Technology
• Computer Science
• Industrial Automation

Background:

• The plant factory and vertical farming industry is emerging but faces challenges with current industrial cyber-physical systems.
• Existing systems are not optimized for the unique communication, computing, and artificial intelligence demands of controlled environment agriculture.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review use cases and requirements for future plant factories.
• To propose an integrated architecture for plant factories, incorporating communication and computing domains.
• To advocate for a co-design methodology across disciplines for efficient implementation.

Main Methods:

• Review of current plant factory and vertical farming industry requirements.
• Development of a novel architecture integrating communication and computing for plant factories.
• Validation of the proposed architecture through academic and industrial practices.

Main Results:

• Identified suboptimal performance of existing industrial cyber-physical systems in plant factories.
• Proposed a new architecture tailored to plant factory specific needs.
• Preliminary proof-of-concept validated by academic and industrial practices.

Conclusions:

• Current plant factory systems require significant improvements in cyber-physical infrastructure.
• The proposed architecture offers a pathway to optimize plant factories by integrating communication and computing.
• A holistic, cross-disciplinary co-design approach is crucial for advancing plant factories and similar industries.