The SWAMP project published a paper in the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC 2020), reporting experience with fuzzy logic to control the automated irrigation of crops using soil moisture, air humidity, and air temperature sensor data. The fuzzy system was able to reduce about 20% of the water used for irrigation. For the second year, SWAMP dissemination activities reach this important IEEE conference focused on technology for sustainability and other humanitarian concerns, following the example of GHTC 2019.
This paper presents a fuzzy inference system based irrigation control system to determine water irrigation volume for a sweet pepper crop. The system is composed of a Mandani fuzzy control algorithm that receives data from soil moisture, air humidity and air temperature sensors from the crop field. Also, the rain forecast is gathered from a personal weather station located near to the crop field. Data gathered are used by the control algorithm to ensure that the soil moisture at the root zone is readily available to the plant.
The first results show that after 62 days from seeding, the system can reduced irrigation by about 20% through controlling soil moisture levels at the plant root zone, saving water content on the irrigation process.
