Control Applications and Ergonomics in Agriculture 1998

In this workshop an attempt was made to fuse the disciplines involved in the requirements, specification, design and implementation of control systems for the automation of agricultural systems.


The need to meet the demanding specifications for increasingly complex agricultural systems is being addressed by using increasingly sophisticated models and control algorithms. In parallel, the ever-decreasing profit margins in the agricultural sector no longer permit agriculture to operate in the traditional manner, but are forcing it to transform into a contemporary business with all the complexities that this implies. The work environment is changing rapidly and humans are moving to positions of supervision and management while automation and robotics are taking over many of the menial and tedious tasks. Modern technological developments in industrial management and control are entering agriculture and transforming it rapidly into an industry.


Smaller agricultural systems are being linked to produce hierarchical large-scale agricultural systems, whose management and control demands high level intelligent decision support mechanisms. Local and wide area networks provide the relevant agricultural and economic data and facts to central production management systems where decisions are made and subsequently transferred to remote locations for execution. Agriculture, which is a highly distributed operation, is taking advantage of modern communications networks, unifying remote locations into a virtual world.


Agriculture has been making significant steps in producing food and fibers of improved quality in a highly constrained economic environment. Robust control of such a largely uncertain system demands that application domain experts work closely with systems analysts and control engineers to produce systems of higher autonomy and efficiency to meet todays global challenge.