Title: A combined solution for flexible control of poultry houses

Authors: Lucas Schmidt; Dalcimar Casanova; Richardson Ribeiro; Marcelo Teixeira; Heitor M. Gomes

Addresses: Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Pato Branco, Brazil ' Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Pato Branco, Brazil ' Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Pato Branco, Brazil ' Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Pato Branco, Brazil ' Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

Abstract: In poultry houses, thermal comfort is decisive for maximising the feed conversion rate, a measure for successful production. As there are different automatic control options, that result in variable performance indexes, this paper reproduces, tests, and compares two of them: a reactive, that applies event-driven methods, and a bio-inspired, which is based on artificial intelligence techniques. As each approach adds specific advantages to the process control, we combine them into a single framework that gathers their best features. Simulations using real data show that temperature and humidity have been reproduced with 97% and 80% precision, respectively. In comparison, reactive and bio-inspired approaches show respectively accuracies of 90% and 82% for temperature, and 60% and 66% for humidity. Therefore, we conclude that our approach can improve both reactive and bio-inspired control, standing as a feasible and flexible alternative for the control of poultry houses.

Keywords: intelligent systems; poultry houses; automatic control; formal modelling; application of artificial intelligence in poultry farming; automatic intelligent control of poultry houses; neural networks application; bio-inspired control of poultry houses; automated poultry farming; temperature and humidity control in poultry houses.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2021.121539

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2021 Vol.67 No.2/3, pp.232 - 243

Received: 26 Jun 2020
Accepted: 15 Feb 2021
Published online: 17 Mar 2022 *

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