Co-simulation tool for control in agricultural processes

A co-simulation tool is presented for applications in agricultural processes in the Colombian context. Colombia has a high potential to develop agricultural improvements decreasing the lag of technology adoption and scarce crop information. One of the keys for boosting agriculture is an application of control strategies to agricultural processes. Several agricultural models have been developed but no one focuses on control systems design. For control strategies development, it is proposed a tool that allows validation of input/output variables. In this regard, different options to integrate signals are provided in this work. Since, measuring variables is not an easy task, it is necessary estimating their value. Therefore, a combination of real data directly from a physical sensor, and indirect data from other software sources is developed (i.e., websites and databases). This tool is a combination of some functions and modules of agricultural process simulation software (i.e., AquaCrop) and Matlab/Simulink. Finally, to validate the utility of this tool two control strategies are designed for a potato crop under climatic disturbances.