# IGrow: A Smart Agriculture Solution to Autonomous Greenhouse Control

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05464 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05464/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05905/) (2018)
- [When to Trust Your Model: Model-Based Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08253/) (2019)
- [Deep learning in agriculture: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11809/) (2018)
- [Sample Efficient Reinforcement Learning via Model-Ensemble Exploration and Exploitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.01825/) (2021)
- [Prediction error-driven memory consolidation for continual learning. On the case of adaptive greenhouse models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.12616/) (2020)
- [Path Planning in Dynamic Environments with Adaptive Dimensionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06853/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [A Survey on Cloud-Edge-Terminal Collaborative Intelligence in AIoT Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18803/) (2025)
- [GreenLight-Gym: Reinforcement learning benchmark environment for control of greenhouse production systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05336/) (2024)
- [Recent applications of machine learning, remote sensing, and iot approaches in yield prediction: a critical review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04566/) (2023)
- [Enhancing Agricultural Machinery Management through Advanced LLM Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20588/) (2024)
- [Towards Fully Automated Decision-Making Systems for Greenhouse Control: Challenges and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21640/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agriculture is the foundation of human civilization. However, the rapid increase of the global population poses a challenge on this cornerstone by demanding more food. Modern autonomous greenhouses, equipped with sensors and actuators, provide a promising solution to the problem by empowering precise control for high-efficient food production. However, the optimal control of autonomous greenhouses is challenging, requiring decision-making based on high-dimensional sensory data, and the scaling of production is limited by the scarcity of labor capable of handling this task. With the advances of artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and cloud computing technologies, we are hopeful to provide a solution to automate and smarten greenhouse control to address the above challenges. In this paper, we propose a smart agriculture solution named iGrow, for autonomous greenhouse control (AGC): (1) for the first time, we formulate the AGC problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) optimization problem; (2) we design a neural network-based simulator incorporated with the incremental mechanism to simulate the complete planting process of an autonomous greenhouse, which provides a testbed for the optimization of control strategies; (3) we propose a closed-loop bi-level optimization algorithm, which can dynamically re-optimize the greenhouse control strategy with newly observed data during real-world production. We not only conduct simulation experiments but also deploy iGrow in real scenarios, and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of iGrow in autonomous greenhouse simulation and optimal control. Particularly, compelling results from the tomato pilot project in real autonomous greenhouses show that our solution significantly increases crop yield (+10.15%) and net profit (+92.70%) with statistical significance compared to planting experts.