Abstract:
Nowadays, ongoing digital transformation across different industries entirely changes the way of operations in light of modern technologies. In the context of Industry 4.0, one of the main enablers of digitization is the digital twin technology. A digital twin is an extremely useful tool in helping to monitor the current condition of various types of processes, determine the appropriate control strategies, predict future behavior, and optimize resource utilization. Besides the industrial manufacturing systems, the digital twins offer enormous potential for smart farming systems by enabling the combination of computing and networking infrastructures with data-driven decision-making. In this study, we present a novel digital twin implementation that is used for smart greenhouse management. In our implementation, we have created a wireless sensor/actuator network (WSAN) and digital twin software to remotely monitor and automatically control the microclimate and irrigation operations as well as to make predictions about possible plant diseases. Unlike the traditional cloud server-based approach, we have adopted the fog computing model that implies deploying the developed digital twin software on the local server at the farmhouse near the greenhouse. The proposed fog-connected digital twin application was implemented and tested in the pilot greenhouse of the Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University. The experimental study shows the effectiveness of the proposed digital twin implementation in terms of yield increase, crop quality, water saving, and plant disease protection. Β© The Author(s).
