Every grower’s ultimate goal is to maximize the yield and quality of his crop, while minimizing the use of resources, to save costs. Exactly this is the mission of the teams competing in Wageningen University’s Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge, only then without ever entering the greenhouse.

So far the challenge is progressing very well for team AuTomatoes, consisting of consultants, data scientists, engineers, researchers, and students from TU Delft, Van der Hoeven Horticultural Projects, KeyGene, and Hoogendoorn Growth Management. They harvested their first tomatoes a while ago, and the results still look promising.

What is the secret of the team’s success? Who are they and how do they do it?

Van der Hoeven Horticultural Projects is a well-known greenhouse construction company that delivers turn-key horticultural projects all over the world. They work on climate simulations for creating optimal semi-closed greenhouses. Van der Hoeven R&D engineer Leonard Baart de la Faille shares the knowledge about modelling and systems engineering he gained in his years of experience. The team uses his experience to develop new algorithms to steer the growth factors. As the team captain, he uses his helicopter view to monitor the team’s progress closely.
Consultant Godfrey Dol shares his 37 years of experience with the team and assists in the development of new ideas and algorithms. In addition, he is in charge of taking decisions about stem density and crop handling, and creates the nutrition planning.

TU Delft contributes by providing theoretical knowledge on creating more optimal greenhouse controls, using different and new techniques. TU Delft graduate student Lars Kerkhof is developing new intelligent algorithms to optimize irrigation in the greenhouse and works hard to find new and improved ways to control plant growth.

In short, Van der Hoeven has a lot of practical experience and knowledge in the field of modelling and systems engineering, and TU Delft holds the theoretical knowledge on optimal controls. The combination of this applied and fundamental knowledge, complemented with the knowledge of Hoogendoorn and KeyGene, has led to the development of intelligent algorithms to control greenhouse equipment in an optimal way, which produced fruitful results.