Digital twins in smart farming

Cor Verdouw,Bedir Tekinerdogan,Adrie Beulens,Sjaak Wolfert

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2020.103046

Cor Verdouw, Bedir Tekinerdogan + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.103046

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Abstract

Digital Twins are very promising to bring smart farming to new levels of farming productivity and sustainability. A Digital Twin is a digital equivalent of a real-life object of which it mirrors its behaviour and states over its lifetime in a virtual space. Using Digital Twins as a central means for farm management enables the decoupling of physical flows from its planning and control. As a consequence, farmers can manage operations remotely based on (near) real-time digital information instead of having to rely on direct observation and manual tasks on-site. This allows them to act immediately in case of (expected) deviations and to simulate effects of interventions based on real-life data. This paper analyses how Digital Twins can advance smart farming. It defines the concept, develops a typology of different types of Digital Twins, and proposes a conceptual framework for designing and implementing Digital Twins. The framework comprises a control model based on a general systems approach and an implementation model for Digital Twin systems based on the Internet of Things—Architecture (IoT-A), a reference architecture for IoT systems. The framework is applied to and validated in five smart farming use cases of the European IoF2020 project, focussing on arable farming, dairy farming, greenhouse horticulture, organic vegetable farming and livestock farming.

Highlights

Modern agricultural production is not possible without reliable and up-to-date information about farm operations
Smart Farming can be seen as the phase of Precision Agriculture, in which management tasks are based on precise location data and on context data, situa tional awareness and event triggers (Balafoutis et al, 2017; Wolfert et al, 2017)
A smart farming system can be viewed as a cyber-physical control cycle that seamlessly integrates sensing and monitoring, smart analyses & planning and smart control of farm operations for all relevant farm processes (‘whole farm management perspective’)

Summary

Introduction

Modern agricultural production is not possible without reliable and up-to-date information about farm operations. We have selected cases that were expected to be appropriate for illustrating the use of the Digital Twin concept, especially due to including dynamic mirroring of real and virtual objects by using IoT technologies. The definition study has identified main perspectives and definitions on Digital Twins in literature, especially in the Product Lifecycle Management and Internet of Things domain. Based on this analysis, we have developed a typology of Digital Twins, including distinct control capabilities. The domain analysis has reviewed existing literature on the usage of Digital Twins in the context of smart farming. Non-English and non-accessible papers were excluded from the study

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