AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE DESIGN OF AUTONOMOUS, ENCLOSED AGROECOSYSTEMS

It is possible to make agricultural production units autonomous by giv ing them sufficiently sophisticated control systems. In this regard we are particularly interested in creating and enclosed unit in which a number of species co-exist and are produced simultaneously; we refer t o this as an enclosed agro-ecosystem. Our intent is to create an enclo sed agro-ecosystem which is autonomous, having independent decision-ma king power and authority over its internal workings as well as its int eractions with the external world. Moreover, we want it to behave saga ciously, being both cognitive and conscious. We ascribe such functiona lity to the capacity of an entity's control system and the intent of t his paper is to establish a framework and terminology to allow us to a nalyze the full range of control activities displayed by biological ma chines so that we might mimic their operation and add similar function ality to agro-ecosystems. Initially, we have done this with reference to a production greenhouse which might be made partially or fully auto nomous with this approach. To establish a basis for the design of an a ppropriate control system a model of the enclosed agro-ecosystem is fi rst elaborated. This is followed by a general description of a control system structure which could accommodate most types of commonly obser vable biological control activities; the terminology and the framework are developed within the context of that description.