AILo Talk - Juan Diego Cardenas Cartagena. University of Groningen

Title: Concept Design of Reinforcement Learning Architecture for Aquaponics

Abstract:

Aquaponics is a sustainable farming technique that aims to grow plants while harvesting fish by exploiting the nitrogen cycle in a closed-loop water circuit. Such a system requires careful management of water pressure, fish food, water quality, indoor temperature, light, and other variables. Although standard industrial control techniques perform reasonably well in small-scale aquaponics, they do not consider objectives such as plant growth or fish comfort. Hence, we consider a reinforcement learning (RL) approach as adaptive control to include them. However, training an RL agent is difficult as sampling the environment is expensive regarding system safety. Therefore, in this talk, we will discuss potential strategies to address safety during the training of an RL agent in aquaponics.