Research Proposal 1 : Automated Watering Systems to Promote More Efficient Plant Growth

Research Proposal :

Automated Watering Systems to Promote More Efficient Plant Growth

Research Question: Can an autonomous robot designed to water plants provide a more optimal amount
of
water than humans?

Hypothesis : The frequency at which the robot waters the plant will be more ideal for growth than the
frequency of watering conducted by a person.

It seems that today, people are more involved with gardening than ever before. Maybe it is attributed to
more scientific findings about conservation being common knowledge among many people. However,
there are still some who chalk up their lack of a green thumb to not being able to invest the time to care
for a plant ,or feel that they are far too uninformed on the matter to participate.
That it is why the prospect of an autonomous watering robot could prove to remedy such issues. With
the creation of such robots, we could see the infrastructure from these models implemented into larger
scale operations. This could prove to be beneficial to long term sustainability as it would promote
longevity for plants as well. To look into this, I have began the preliminary stages of creating such a
machine. From the start of it, the question was how would the thought process of such a device work.
For starters, it has to be able to dispense water, the exact amount of water. Not only that, but it should
also be able to notify owners when it’s internal water shortage is running low. So, I began by pseudo
coding these two main processes. They function in 2 modules with their own respective booleans
(if else statements) and loops.

With such a bare bones and punctual approach to its functionality it now becomes a matter of hardware.
As this is being conducted currently in a smaller scope, the resources required do not have to be so
grandiose. This machine would be equipped with a water tank holding a liter of water, a spout to
release water, a moisture sensor, two small LED lights,and would run on an Arduino UNO (a small
computer). The first process (detecting when the plant needs to be watered) would use the moisture
sensor to water the plant whenever it finds the soil to be too dry. As for notifying users when the device
is low on water, an LED light could switch from green to red when it detects that the soil is still dry
even after watering it (essentially when the water storage runs out). When the watering bot is finished
the plan is to have it water a plant for a month parallel to one taken care of by a human. I hope to find
out if the use of an autonomous gardening bot’s watering patterns will yield a healthier plant than that
of the average watering habits performed by people. The water, type of plant, amount of water
dispensed, sunlight, and temperature will all be constants in this experiment. Below is a better
visualization of all variables incorporated in this study.

Name	Variable Type	Symbol	Units	Description
Frequency of Watering	Independent	-	Hours	How often the plant will be watered
Moisture of Soil	Dependent	-	m3.m-3	How much water is in the soil.
Water	Controlled	-	µS/cm pH	The same type of water; distilled.
Temperature	Controlled	-	Celsius	The temperature condition that will be maintained in
Soil	Controlled	-	pH	General planting soil.
Light Exposure	Controlled	-	mW/cm2	Artificial light used to simulate outdoor conditions without worrying about weather.
Plant	Controlled	-	-	The plant is currently undecided, but it will be same seeds used for both.

Through the creation of this device and data collected to test it, I hope to use this information to
better enhance the design and performance of the bot. I hypothesize that the frequency at which the
robot waters the plant will be more ideal for growth than the frequency of watering conducted by a
person. Assuming that the findings reveal such, I intend to branch out the possibilities and functionality
of the machine for it to be better integrated with its user. Say program it to notify owners when it runs
out of water through an app straight to their phone. Possibly even generate algorithms that can be used
to calculate the average water intake of specific species of plants for those who do not own the robot.
I hope for this experiment to ultimately serve as the groundwork for the the first “smart garden”, and to
use information gathered to encourage more people to own their own garden.

References

Bagga, A.K., Bala, M., & Tomar, O. (1984). Effect of short durations of overwatering on

water use efficiency of two mungbean (vigna radiata (l.) wilczek) varieties. Indian Journal
of Plant Physiology, 27(2), 159-165. Retrieved from Samviti Scholar Network database.

Chavez, M. M., Pereria, J. S., Maroco, J., Rodrigues, M. L., Ricardo, C.P. P., Osorio, M. L., . . .

Pinheiro, C. (2002). How plants cope with water stress in the field? Photosynthesis and growth.
Annals of Botany, 89(7), 907-916. Retrieved from Oxford Academic Database.

Gupta, A., Kumawat, S., & Garg, S. (2016). Automatic plant watering system. Imperial Journal

of International Research, 2(4), 1123-1127. Retrieved from International Journal database.

Oswald, J. K. (n.d.). Automated water management for center pivot irrigation systems (Master's

thesis). Retrieved from South Dakota State University Research Database.

Patil, P. S., Alai, S. R., & Malpure, A. C. (2014). An intelligent and automated drip irrigation

system using sensors network control system. International Journal of Innovative Research
in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(12), 1-3. Retrieved from Research and
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