TC 8.1. Control in Agriculture

Welcome Message from the Chair
 

Welcome to TC 8.1"Control in Agriculture"

It is the role of agricultural industries to ensure that food production is continuous and that basic needs of human being for food, fiber and fuel is supported and maintained. However, it is forecasted that the world's population will increase to about 10 billion over then next 40 to 50 years, which creates a creat challenge for our generation to produce more to meet the rapidly increasing demant. Agriculture in developed countries has increased in energy input for production to secure an adequate food supply and safety for increasing population. Recently, in Asia, the US and the EU, interest has been shown in "sustainable agriculture" for reducing the environmental impact while increasing agricultural production. At the same time, there are problems of severe labor shortage, increased production costs, and declining skilled workforce. One way to solve these problems is to innovate and adopt key technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Agricultural Things, Big Data, Automation and Robotics.

In fact, the TC8.1 "Control in Agriculture" has been organizing meeting, workshps and conferences under IFAC umbrella for researchers and professionals interested in automation, robotics, information technology, big data, internet of things and intelligent systems used in bioproduction systems.　The intent of our TC is that the researchers and engineers can exchange information about trends in instrumentation and automatic control technologies for bioproduction systems and highlight the use of automated equipment for food, fiber, and fuel production in open-field farming, in environmentally controlled greenhouse facilities, postharvest processing plants, and space-based environments. The following are the specific workshop and conference our TC has been organizing as a primary sponsor.

    Workshop: BIOROBOTICS
    Conference: AGRICONTROL

If you are a researcher or practitioner interested in contributing to the activity of this TC8.1, please feel free to contact me or any other members of the technical committee.

Manoj Karkee, Chair of TC8.1