Ruvindee Rupasinghe, Sanjaya Ratnayake, Anuruddha Ranatunga, Amila Sajayahan, Asoka S. Karunananda

Faculty of Information TechnologyUniversity of Moratuwa

SAS_EN – A swarm of Agents for a sustainble Environnent

Overview

• Introduction• Problem Definition• Existing Solutions & Others’ work• Aims and Objectives• Using MAS for environment sustainability• Analysis and Design• Implementation • Discussion & Further work

Natural Environment

• Natural environment has been the infrastructure for all activities of living beings in the world.

• All living beings occupy and consume environmental resources while releasing the waste products to the same environment

• Undoubtedly, environment is the most precise resource to be effetely utilized and managed.

Nevertheless

• When compare with other living beings, humans release harmful waste products to the environment as a part of their consumption of environmental resources

• Environment space has been utilized by the man kind by destroying the natural balance

• Humans consume limited environment resources without allowing regeneration of such resources

Exsisting approches ….

• Environmental information systems• Grow rooms• Grow boxes• Automation Components However, all of them follow a reactive paradigm, where the

system waits till the environment change for making any action.

Aim

• Develop an autonomous Agent based solution for maintaining environment sustainability

Objectives

• Study of the existing environmental issues. • Study of technologies that can solve the

problem • Design and Develop an Agent Based Solution

for environment sustainability – Hydroponics environment has been used as the test environment

• Evaluation of the solution

Adopted Approach – Using Swarm of Agent for a sustainble Environment

• A multi agent system to emulate process in hydroponics environment

• Enable passing messages to establish negotiations among environmental factors to achieve the environment sustainability

Our solution,SAS_EN

Decision Architecture

Temperature control AgentTemperature control Agent

Water control AgentWater control Agent OntologyOntology

Message Agent Message Agent

Nutrient control AgentNutrient control Agent

Actuators ActuatorsSensorsSensors

Ec measureEc measureWater level measureWater level measure

PH measurePH measureTemperature measureTemperature measure

ValvesValves

FanFanLightLight

PumpsPumps

Features & Advantages

• 24/7 monitoring of the system(Ec value, PH value, temperature etc.)

• Autonomous emergent decision making• Self controlling of the inputs to the system (Water

level, nutrient solution, heat & ventilation)

Uniqueness of the SAS_EN approach

Traditional Automation Our approachPre-programmed behavior Emergent behavior

Reactive ProactiveNot adaptive AdaptiveNeeds a PC No need for a PC

Periodic adjustments Dynamic adjustmentsDepend on a pre-specified

algorithmDepend on the interactions

between Agents

Technical Overview

Usage

• Cost of the system around $ 300• Easy installation• Intervention required from the owner is minimum• Ability to operate manually in case of a power

failure

Evaluation

Performance evaluation criteria

Managed by the embedded solution

Managed manually

Yield Yield was high. Also there were only few perishable items. (1.5% yield was perishable )

Yield is average. There were many perishable foods. (2.5% yield was perishable )

Labour hours 2 labour hours per day 16 labour hours per day

Money Initial cost, electricity cost Labour cost, Rework cost

Reliability Reliable Reliable

Response time Very High Average

Usability Very High Average

Flashback

• Addressing the Environment sustainability• Enhancing an alternative agricultural method• Provide proactive and autonomous

capabilities to a Hydroponics system• Enables a Hydroponic system to sustain

amidst rapid environmental changes

Sanjaya

Ruvindee Anuruddha

Amila

SAS_EN in action

Faculty of Information TechnologyUniversity of Moratuwa

Sri Lanka