Plant Factory and OptiClimate HVACD
Conceptual architecture of a typical plant factory, which needs a synergy of industrial informatics and operation technologies in the production floor where communication, computing and AI can play a role. In the crop production floor, plants are growing in vertically stacked modules. The stacked structure brings tremendous flexibility to the arrangement of different cultivars while providing standardized nursery services, leading to the maximum revenue. Crop productions in a plant factory highly rely on cooperation and interaction of a series of subsystems, such as illumination, air management, thermal control, nutrient delivery and factory automation systems, which covers the whole procedure from plant growth phases to harvest and transport.The success of a plant factory highly relies on three subsystems, namely the lightemitting diode (LED) supplemental system, the plant growth system, and the environmental control system, which appeal for different requirements on industrial communication,computing as well as intelligence. A typical plant factory can be 400 times more efficient in land use compared to outdoor farming [8], thanks to the vertically structured growing modules. As a result, massive sensors that monitor indoor climate and automation facilities,and actuators for the growth system are widely distributed in a plant factory, indicating that wireless communications are preferred to ease the deployment.OptiClimatefarm An IoT-based Sharing Plant Factory System for Nature Connectedness Improvement in Built Environment