PRE2017 3 Groep1

Planning

26-02-2018 (end week 2)

Wouter

• Research the current potatoe harvest techniques and robotics

• Research current greenhouse technologies

Sjoerd

• Research ideal air compositions for potatoes

Stefan

• Research ideal temperature for potatoes

Aricia

• Research the ground properties on mars (root growth, density, reaction on nutritions, etc.)

Máire

• Research ideal light intensity for potatoes and the situation on Mars

Thijs

• Research current harvest processes of potatoes

• Update the wiki

05-03-2018 (end week 3)

Wouter

• Start a simple model in matlab which takes the martian ground into account

Sjoerd

• Ideale lucht compositie voor aardappelplanten

Stefan

• Choose breed of potato

• Ideal light intensities for potatoes

Aricia

• Martian ground inspection, make an overview of what is in the ground and how many of it is in the ground

Máire

• Planning

Thijs

• Potato growth cycle research

12-03-2018 (end week 4)

Wouter

• Looking into the ideal place on Mars to place our greenhouse and find out what the conditions in that area are. Why is this the best place for our greenhouse?

• Implement the new found information in the model

Sjoerd

• Decide on the most efficient heating system (lamps / heaters / underground heating)

Stefan

• sensors (temperature, nutrition values, plants)

Aricia

• Make an overview of all made assumptions and describe why these assumptions are made and why these are good approximations

Máire

• Sprinkler system in greenhouse

Thijs

• Ideal moisture ground potatoes

19-03-2018(end week 5)

Wouter

• Try to eliminate approximations by implementing more complicated situations in the model

Sjoerd

• Work out the concept and our approach (detailed description of what our idea is and what we want to make, what we assume is already there and how our idea is going to look in the end, how we approached )

Stefan

• Walls of the greenhouse, considering air pressure, isolation material, underground walls, size etc.

Aricia

• Work out the USE aspects of our project (write scenario’s, why is there need for this technology, user requirements, requirements technology, preferences, constrains ), look into the wiki of others for inspiration if needed

Máire

• Current robot research -> Describe what our robot can do based on literature

• The ideal way of fertilization, based on the research done on the sprinkler systems and on the current robot

Thijs

• Try to eliminate approximations by implementing more complicated situations in the model

Project globally finished, such that only small changes have to be made

26-03-2018 (end week 6)

Wouter

Sjoerd

Stefan

Aricia

Màire

Thijs

undivided

- final presentation

Log

main task distribution

planning control: Máire

update model in matlab and simulink: Wouter

update wiki: Thijs

secretary: Sjoerd

contact: Stefan

useful contacts

- Roy Cobbenhagen: potatoes - Wouter Kuijpers: tomatoes in greenhouses

Subject statement

problem statement

There is a mission going on to send a group of people to Mars for colonisation. When they are on Mars, it is important that they have enough recources to sustain. For food has to be tailed. As there is a limited amount of crew members in the first stage of this mission, it is favourable that as much work is done autonomous by rational agents. One of these things is the tailing and harvesting of food, like potatoes. This process is not yet fully autonomous.

Objective

the objective is to make a model in matlab and simulink for an autonomous controlled environment for potato harvest. This includes the harvesting and the planting of the potatoes at right times, as well as keeping the environment ideal for growth.

Aspects

- harvesting and planting robot

- greenhouse

- climate control

- water and nutrition supply

Users

The first users are the people that will be living on mars. The second hand users are the engineers and programmers designing and programming the robots.

User requirements

Because the resources on Mars are very limited and the robot has to be build in a way that it is very easy to maintain, if a robot breaks it must be repaered swiftly and efficient. Especially in the early stages of a Mars mission, the people might not have the required knowledge to make any complex modifications or repairs to the robot. This has to be taken in account when the robot is designed and because of this the robot has to be easy to repair and to change out parts. The climate differs on Mars compared to that of Earth so

Summary literature search

Conditions on Mars

Weather on Mars

Air on Mars

Soil on Mars

Climate change on the planet Mars by detection of ground ice. Th water layer is 10 - 40 cm thick and occurs in between latitudes of 30 degrees and 60 degrees. This means that water is available on Mars. Because of this carbonates can be produced. The exact substances will be discussed below.

ions

A layer of ice has been found at a depth of 5 – 15 cm deep. In the soils around the Phoenix landing site calciumcarbonate has been discovered (3-5 wt%) by scanning calorimetry. It showed an endothermic transition at around 725 degrees Celsius accompanied by the evolution of calciumcarbonate and the soil had the ability to buffer pH against acid addition. It formation in the past was due to interaction of the atmospheric CO2 and the water on particle surfaces. The Martian soil has been further looked into, where around 10mM of dissolved salts have been found out of which 0.4 – 0.6 % perchlorate (ClO4). The other negatively charged ions included small concentrations of bicarbonate, chloride and possibly sulfate. The cations detected (positively charged ions) included Magnesium, natrium and small concentration of Kalium and calcium. Besides this, an alkaline pH was measures of 7.7 (with a marge of 0.5). These findings included that the soil at Mars has changed of the past years due to the action liquid water. It has also been found out that there is mechanism to place ice at the surface: clouds of ice crystals precipitated back to the surface and formed a daily basis. Even though ions have been found, nitrate is an important ion for the Martian soil to be able to grow crops. In the table below, the concenrtations of a few ions are given.

Nitrate should naturally be formed through the oxidation of atmospheric N and then accumulate on the surface. On Mars odd nitrogen (N and NO) can eventually be turned into NO2, which can form nitric acid. Nitrate, thus, has not yet been detected on Mars: there are only some possible detections. In table 3 multiple acid formations can be seen.

These results are bases on the Phoenix landing site in 2008. In 2014 a meteorite from Mars (EETA79001) has been investigated. When investigating this meteorite, it had been concluded that the soil composition was Mars origin because those substances have been detected within the meteorite that is difficult to reconcile with terrestrial contamination. EETA79001 showed the presence of 0.6 ± 0.1 ppm ClO4-, 1.4 ± 0.1 ppm ClO3- and 16 ± 0.2 ppm NO3-. It has been said that because of ClO3-, ClO2- or ClO- should also be presented. This was then produced by Cl- and γ- and X-ray radiolysis of ClO4-.

Furthermore, an article was found comparing the findings on Mars and Antarctic Dry Valley soils. The article includes tables including the concentrations of certain ions found in each place. It has been concluded that the salts of the Phoenix landing site and the salts of the meteorite are similar and that the ADV are also a good match. This also strengthens the argument that ADV is a good Mars analog environment of Earth. The occurring ions and concentrations of it in ADV and on Mars are the same within one order of magnitude. ClO4¬- is three orders of magnitude bigger on Mars than on Earth. NO3- is may be present on Mars but this is at a level below the detection limit of the nitrate sensor. The soil of the meteorite and on the Phoenix landing site are alike, however, on average the concentrations in the meteorite are 4% of those on the Phoenix site and the concentration Ca+ is 16% bigger on the meteorite

The last article includes information about the nitrogen cycle and the ratio of the loss of nitrogen isotopes. This mainly has to do with the air activity, therefore, not relevant for the piece of text about the ground. There was a good explanation, however, why it is difficult to detect nitrate on Mars. This explanation is given below. A cause could be leaching. This means that the nitrate will be at a bigger depth in comparison to less soluble ions such as sulfates.

Nitrates on Mars?

Some articles say the opposite of one another. Some state that nitrate has been detected on Mars and others do not. As nitrate is crucial for growing crops, it is essential to know whether there is actually nitrate on Mars. Because of the fact that all articles are reliable and some are even produced in the same sort of magazine, it has been decided to trust the articles which are more recently made. It could namely be the case that nitrate has not been discovered in 2001 but in between 2001 and 2013 for example. When trusting the most recent article, nitrate has been discovered on Mars.

Farming robots

Several articles were found on farming robotics. However most of these articles focus on robots that are (partially) manually controlled. It has only been a couple of years since designing and experimenting with fully autonomous farming robots has begun. The hardest part in programming the robots is to make them able to see whether a fruit or vegetable is ripe, or even to tell apart a fruit or vegetable from the plant. Furthermore the robot needs to be very delicate in order for the plant not to be damaged.

In one of the found articles a robot is described that is used to farm tomatoes. In this case colour is used as a measure of how ripe the tomato is. When the colour is above a certain teint, the robot takes it. Otherwise it waits till the tomato gets a darker shade. The robot described, is a very small robot which climbs up the plant and cuts the stem of the tomato if it is ready. This technique is however very hard to apply in our case, since we want to focus on potatoes which grow under the ground. Though there might be a way to use colour underground if we introduce a light in our robot. Another downside to this technique is that it requires a lot of these small robots, which can turn out to be expensive. On the positive side, these obots are very precise and do not waste a lot of vegetables (once the programming is perfected). An adjustment can be made from looking at the colour by looking for example at the size when it comes to potatoes.

Another article describes how a prototype is built of a fully autonomous harvesting tractor. This is used for vegetables which grow underground, but it is a very blunt device. It basically pulls out everything, including the potatoes that might not be ripe yet. In a very restricted area like Mars this is not desirable, since there are limited supplies and every potato counts.

Also a very useful article was found on how the ideal farming robot could be designed.

Literature search

To start of our project we are doing a literature research. We divided the literature search into the following areas:

1) The conditions on mars (including the effects on aggro culture due to these conditions)

2) Robots and machinery that are already used in outher space

3) Farming robots that are already being used on earth

For all of these areas papers will be searched and a summary of the overall findings will be given with refrences to the found papers.

Mars conditions

- C. Leovy. “Weather and climate on Mars” (2001)

- F. Gifford Jr. “The Surface-Temperature Climate of Mars.” (1955)

- S. R. Lewis, et al. “A climate database for Mars” (1999)

- G.W. Wieger Wamelink, et al. “Can plants grow on mars and the Moon: A growth experiment on Mars and Moon soil simulants” (2014)

- M. Nelson, et al. “Integration of lessons from recent research for “Earth to Mars” life support systems (2006)

- S. Silverstone, et al. “Development and research program for a soil-based bioregenerative agriculture system to feed a four person crew at a mars base” (2003)

- Journal of Climate. Jun2001, Vol. 14 Issue 11, p2430. 13p. 23 Graphs..... no access

- Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. Feb2018, Vol. 254, p99-110. 12p....... no access

- Climate Research. 2009, Vol. 39 Issue 1, p47-59. 13p. 7 Charts, 5 Graphs, 1 Map..... no access

- Canadian Journal of Forest Research. Oct2010, Vol. 40 Issue 10, p2036-2048. 12p. 1 Chart, 1 Graph..... no accesss

- Global Change Biology. Jan2007, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p169-183. 15p. 1 Diagram, 7 Graphs, 2 Maps..... (no access)

- James I. L. Morison,Michael D. "plant growth and climate change" (2006)..... (no access)

- R. RötterS.C. van de Geijn. "Climate Change Effects on Plant Growth, Crop Yield and Livestock". pp 651–681 (1999).... (no access)

- Angela T. Moles. "Global patterns in plant height"- Journal of ecology. (2009).... access

Potato

- Adam H. Sparks. "Climate change may have limited effect on global risk of potato late blight" - Global change biology (2014).... (no access)

- Bakhtiyor Pulatov. "Modeling climate change impact on potato crop phenology, and risk of frost damage and heat stress in northern Europe"- Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. Pages 281-292. (2015).... (no access)

- D.T. Westermann “Nutritional requirements of potatoes” (2005)

- Van Ittersum, M.K. & Scholte, K. Potato Res (1992) 35: 365. https://doi-org.dianus.libr.tue.nl/10.1007/BF02357593

Existing farming technology

- Tillet, N. (2003). Robots on the farm. The industrial robot, 30(5), 396. Retrieved February 23, 2018, from [1]

- Giles, F. (2017). Agricultural robots no longer science fiction. Florida grower, 110(2), 12-13. Retrieved February 23, 2018, from [2]

- Hill, P. (2016). 9 robots designed to enhance the farm workforce. Farmers Weekly, 165(3), 66-70,72,75. Retrieved from [3]

- Robert Bogue, (2013) "Can robots help to feed the world?", Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Vol. 40 Issue: 1, pp.4-9, [4]

- Victor Bloch, Avital Bechar, Amir Degani, (2017) "Development of an environment characterization methodology for optimal design of an agricultural robot", Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Vol. 44 Issue: 1, pp.94-103, [5]

- Bac, C. W., van Henten, E. J., Hemming, J. and Edan, Y. (2014), Harvesting Robots for High-value Crops: State-of-the-art Review and Challenges Ahead. J. Field Robotics, 31: 888–911. doi:10.1002/rob.21525

Robots and machinery used in outer space

- Rećko, M., Tołstoj-Sienkiewicz, J., & Turycz, P. (2017). Versatile soil sampling system capable of collecting, transporting, storing and preliminary onboard analysis for mars rover analogue10.4028/www.scientific.net/SSP.260.59 [Robotic arm for Mars Rover] Link to article

- Czaplicki, P., Recko, M., & Tolstoj-Sienkiewicz, J. (2016). Robotic arm control system for mars rover analogue. Paper presented at the 2016 21st International Conference on Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics, MMAR 2016, 1122-1126. 10.1109/MMAR.2016.7575295 [Soil sampling] Link to article

- Sakib, N., Ahmed, Z., Farayez, A., & Kabir, M. H. (2017). An approach to build simplified semi-autonomous mars rover. Paper presented at the IEEE Region 10 Annual International Conference, Proceedings/TENCON, 3502-3505. 10.1109/TENCON.2016.7848707 [Making a Mars Rover semi-automatic] Link to article

- Wong, C., Yang, E., Yan, X. -., & Gu, D. (2017). Adaptive and intelligent navigation of autonomous planetary rovers-A survey. Paper presented at the 2017 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems, AHS 2017, 237-244. 10.1109/AHS.2017.8046384 [Intelligent navigation] Link to article

- Parness, A., Abcouwer, N., Fuller, C., Wiltsie, N., Nash, J., & Kennedy, B. (2017). LEMUR 3: A limbed climbing robot for extreme terrain mobility in space. Paper presented at the Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 5467-5473. 10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989643 [Robot with climbing arms (maybe possible to use for planting and harvesting] Link to article

- Garrido, S., Moreno, L., Martín, F., & Álvarez, D. (2017). Fast marching subjected to a vector field–path planning method for mars rovers. Expert Systems with Applications, 78, 334-346. 10.1016/j.eswa.2017.02.019 [Vector field-path planning] Link to article

- Scopus search link

Soil on Mars

- Boynton, W.V. , D. W. Ming, S. P. Kounaves, S. M. M. Young,† R. E. Arvidson, M. H. Hecht, J. Hoffman, P. B. Niles, D. K. Hamara, R. C. Quinn, P. H. Smith, B. Sutter, D. C. Catling, R. V. Morris. (2009). Evidence for Calcium Carbonate at the Mars Phoenix Landing Site – Science

- Hecht M. H. , S. P. Kounaves, R. C. Quinn, S. J. West, S. M. M. Young,† D. W. Ming, D. C. Catling, B. C. Clark, W. V. Boynton, J. Hoffman, L. P. DeFlores, K. Gospodinova, J. Kapit, P. H. Smith. (2009). Detection of Perchlorate and the Soluble Chemistry of Martian Soil at the Phoenix Lander Site – Science.

- Kounaves S. P., Brandi L. Carrier, Glen D. O’Neil, Shannon T. Stroble, Mark W. Claire. (2014). Evidence of martian perchlorate, chlorate, and nitrate in Mars meteorite EETA79001: Implications for oxidants and organics – Icarus.

- Manning C. V. , Christopher P. McKay, Kevin J. Zahnle. (2008) The nitrogen cycle on Mars: Impact decomposition of near-surface nitrates as a source for a nitrogen steady state – Icarus.

- Mustard J.F. , Christopher D. Cooper & Moses K. Rifkin. (2001). Evidence for recent climate change on Mars from the identication of youthful near-surface ground ice – letters to nature.

- Smith M. L., Mark W. Claire, David C. Catling, Kevin J. Zahnle. (2014). The formation of sulfate, nitrate and perchlorate salts in the martian atmosphere – Icarus.

- Stroble S. P., Kyle M. McElhoney, Samuel P. Kounaves. (2013). Comparison of the Phoenix Mars Lander WCL soil analyses with Antarctic Dry Valley soils, Mars meteorite EETA79001 sawdust, and a Mars simulant – Icarus.

Coaching Questions

Coaching Questions Group 1