15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
INFERENTIAL NEURAL SYSTEM TO CONTROL THE FLUID FERTILIZER APPLICATION
José A. C. Ulson, Sérgio H. Benez, Ivan N. da Silva, André N. de Souza
University of São Paulo – UNESP
Department of Electrical Engineering
CP 473, CEP 170133-360
Bauru – SP, Brazil
University of São Paulo – UNESP
Department of Agricultural Engineering
CP 237, CEP18603-970
Botucatu – SP, Brazil

The application process of fluid fertilizers through variable rates implemented by classical techniques needs a flow meter in the primary controlled variable. This paper proposes an inferential control system based on Artificial Neural Network of the type multilayer perceptron for the identification and control the fertilizer flow rate. In this approach, there is no flow meter since the control is made through secondary variables. The neural network training is made by the algorithm of Levenberg-Marquardt with training data obtained from measurements. The results indicate a fast, stable and low cost control system for precision farming. Levenberg-Marquardt with training data obtained from measurements. The results indicate a fast, stable and low cost control system for precision farming.
Keywords: Farming, Control Systems, Neural Control, Neural Networks, Intelligent control
Session slot T-Mo-A19: IT Based System Control in Agricultural Automation/Area code 4b : Intelligent Control in Agricultural Automation