An Open System for the Management and Control of Greenhouses

Abstract The development of a modern Control and Management system for greenhouses used recent advances in software design and development tools to provide a “no programming needed OPEN system”. This system, MACQU, provides a vehicle through which all research achievements can be easily implemented in the field. To effectively integrate expert system applications in a greenhouse management system, an environment was built that supports all the interfaces between AI applications and the GMS. This environment has a native fuzzy KBS system and a number of procedural control functions that can effectively interact. The development of an open KBS, in the form of tasks and subtasks, provides an elegant way of rapid program development. New rules can be added at any given time and new control scenaria may be implemented by adding new tasks. Fuzzy decisions and fuzzy controllers at the supervisory level, provide adaptive reference generators, which is a real key element in optimal greenhouse control