Abstract— This research “Automating Hydroponics - Removal of Weeds in Paddy Crops” aims to develop a paddy cultivation without any weeds and also without using soil. In today’s world large amount of land are used for cultivation and depending upon the climatic conditions various plants grow differently, in order to overcome this hydroponics is the solution where we cultivate the plants inside a tube with holes to save up lands for cultivation that supports the roots for growth and provision of nutrients to the roots are provided such that the roots grow well-nourished that keeps the plant’s constant growth and ensures that it is healthy. To support the roots without soil, granule pebbles are used to support the roots. Frequent doses of water supply is provided to ensure that the plant gets an adequate amount of water supply for their growth.
Keywords— Hydroponics, Machine Learning, Soilless cultivation, Artificial Intelligence, YOLOv3 

I.	INTRODUCTION
Hydroponics is a soil-less farming method that permits the crops to grow in nutrient rich water(water enriched with NPK).The aggregation of automation and farming is needed to increase efficiency and many more.Huge amount of water is required for cultivation and also enormous amount of land for cultivation, Hydroponics eliminates these by reducing water consumption and also reduces the land required for cultivation. 
First we need to understand why we need automation in removal of weeds. First and foremost, automation decreases the amount of man labor and thereby reducing costs. Second reason for automation is that it can precisely locate and remove weeds. Third reason is automation eradicates the use of herbicides and pesticides that are harmful for human health. Fourth reason is automation promotes environmental sustainability by encouraging eco-friendly farming.
To implement hydroponics, we need a weed detection system, which includes sensors, cameras, laser systems and also trained ML models. Sensors are required to detect weeds based upon pattern, color and other features. Cameras are required to detect the weeds based upon color. Laser system is required to aim and destroy the weeds with utmost accuracy. A trained ML model is needed to differentiate weeds and paddy, to detect them with accuracy and precision, preferably YOLOv3 model is used.
YOLOv3 (You Only Look Once, Version 3) is an object detection model in ML that is used mostly in agriculture that needs accuracy as well as precision. It can accurately and precisely detect objects so it is used in automating hydroponics systems to accurately locate weeds and also to classify them between paddy crops. YOLOv3 is CNN model that can perform 3 tasks at the same time: Object detection, Object classification and Bounding Box Regression. This model is famous for its accuracy and precision and therefore used in automating hydroponics system to remove weeds.
An overview on digital agriculture, the emerging concept of modern farming that refers to managing farms using modern engineering, information and communication methods that aims to elevate the efficiency and accuracy of agriculture production, increasing quality and quantity of production  and also optimizing man labor. It also tells us about the manual engineering and agriculture process. The manual process of agriculture takes more time and thereby, in several cases of examples such as weed removal or pest removal it may kill many crops, within less time. To overcome this tedious process, this paper helps us by giving more insights on engineering and agriculture production by increasing the quality of production. An overview on plant crop protection against non-food plants that are weeds without using any type of chemicals, this paper also tells us that nonfood plants, harmful plants that are weeds are treated with herbicides and chemicals that are harmful to human health. This paper also tells that research is being conducted to remove weeds using non chemical treatments due to environmental and human health concerns. It also tells us about the diseases that are caused in humans due to weeds and usage of chemical pesticides. Alternatively, this paper mainly talks about the non-chemical method of protecting the crops from weeds, such as by using herbicides.
The reasons why weeds should be treated with non-chemical methods including herbicides which are harmful to our health. Due to this concern and also due to concern over our environment and surroundings, this paper presents principles and practices for weed management non chemically that is ecologically based without involvement of any type of chemicals. This paper also presents the reasons as why ecological based weed management best suites in tropical and temperate farming systems, they also gives methods that farmers can use in removal of weeds.


II.	LITERATURE SURVEY
This paper by Baras T [1] gives insights on challenges and drawbacks of manual weeding and herbicide usage. They also talk about efficiency, costs involved, environmental pollution, and human health aspects. It also talks about the usage of advanced robotic technologies in weed removal. This paper also gives insights on the robotic weeding process which includes three main phases:sensing, thinking and acting. This paper also tells us that among all the phases sensing is most important which laid the foundation to the development of sensing technology. This paper also presents insights on image based sensing systems such as RGB, NIR etc,.   
This paper by Green T [2] talks about why hydroponics system are gaining prominence nowadays particularly because herbicides affect human health in some or other way. This paper presents detailed explanation on how to develop Hydroponics systems at home with lower costs and minimal land and without soil and also it gives a detailed overview on how to grow vegetables, fruits using a hydroponics system without soil, with NPK solution, pipes and pumps. This paper also gives explanation on how to develop not one but multiple hydroponics systems at same time.
This paper by Walesworth W  [3] gives an overview of growing plants in little space available using urban horticulture methods. This paper also presents an overview on how even the smallest of space can be utilized for agriculture. This paper tells us that these developed farms are economically productive while also maintaining environmental stability without the involvement of any chemicals, also gives insights on advantages of the same including job opportunities , green space development, water recycling, biodiversity maintenance. It also focuses on the importance of terrace farming, cultivating useful plants in less area of land, without the use of harmful chemical pesticides. It increases the urban greenery planning and Eco-friendly sustainable design. 
This paper by Benton Jones Jr [4] presents basic principles and practical requirements to grow plants without involvement of any soil, This presents a complete guide to develop farming using soil less practices to commercial plant grower. This gives an overview on the  methods involved, giving focus on the requirements, basic principles for growing plants without soil, using pebbles, NPK filled solution, granules and other components. This is the base paper which gives more insights about Hydroponics, cultivating crops without using soil, but by using Pebbles and granules for support, NPK fertilizers dissolved in water for growth of the crops. The dissolved nutrients travel to the crops by using pipes and tubes. Hydroponics involves various sensors which monitor the PH level, water regulation and the level of NPK nutrients dissolved in the water. If any deficiency of nutrients in found in the dissolved nutrients water, the nutrient motor helps in adjusting and monitoring all the nutrients in the dissolved water. This represents why hydroponics are gaining prominence in today’s world, especially people within the scientific community and how they are rapidly expanding throughout the world. The author also covers theoretical and practical aspects of hydroponics. This presents a clear cut picture of growing plants with nutrients and how they can serve as an alternative to soil based farming production and methods involved in hydroponics. This paper also talks about how soilless production affects plant performance compared with normal production. This paper is best for agronomists, horticulturists, greenhouse managers etc. This paper gives up-to-date descriptions of all types of growing methods. It helps us to understand the advantages of using hydroponics rather than planting natural plants.
This paper by olankey [5] gives us reasons why smart cultivation is highly needed : countries are rapidly growing with rapid population and food gaps are prominent in many countries. This gives insights on developing soil less cultivation using IoT based methods in the greenhouse, also why it is highly suited for countries with harsh climatic conditions. This paper talks about one main problem: monitoring and controlling greenhouse climate: conditions where farmers need to maintain various parameters to maintain optimal plant growth. This paper also gives solutions to combat this problem using multi-tier cloud platforms to elevate greenhouse climate.The platform includes sensors, actuators, controllers which are connected to manage the greenhouse climate including monitoring and controlling. To encounter food gaps in the developing countries, hydroponics pave a most significant way, by yielding more output crops. 
This paper by aviv M, Heinrich Leith J [6] talks about why agriculture has started to adopt digital computing methods for growing plants.It tells how smart farming has led to the development and elevation in autonomous equipment, collection of plant data. Research on combating the development of these technologies is needed. Technology continues to impact the agricultural industry. This is best suited for farmers, product managers as it covers a wide range of topics such as crop monitoring, precision livestock farming etc. It also talks about the emergence of smart farming methods with IoT and AI integration for encouraging sustainable farming. This paper talks more about how technology is adopted in agriculture. Technology such as IoT and AI that are used in hydroponics pave the way for most quality crops with high quantity. It also talks about all the sensors and actuators that are used to accomplish soilless agriculture.
This article by Agheer A et al., [7] gives an enormous overview of AI technology that can be used in smart farming innovations. This also gives an overview on main topics such as soil management, crop management, livestock management, harvesting, etc,.This also talks about how IoT can be aggregated with smart farming for giving sustainability goals in our environment. The author also talks about the advantages of smart farming over traditional method based farming discussing on the topics: labor, crop yields, successful harvests, costs where smart farming scores better than traditional farming in all aspects discussed. This paper focuses more on IoT based Sensors and actuators to increase the actual yield of the crop to a higher yield. It focuses on the Time consuming process of the manual, traditional agriculture procedure versus the modern agricultural technology adopted using AI and IoT that senses, monitors and automates all the process.
This article by omar P, Kaur G [8] gives an overview on the problems that are related to food production that have to be mitigated and taken care of. This talks about climate change that can be controlled using greenhouse cultivation. They also talk about how these issues can be solved by using IoT based methods for increasing productivity and accuracy. This also covers topics like monitoring and managing water, soil, crops, increasing productivity, controlling herbicides/insecticides/pesticides, detecting plant diseases, increasing rate of crop sales. It talks more about temperature and climatic changes, which can be sensed, monitored and automated using temperature and humidity sensors. Various sensors are discussed in this paper in detail about monitoring the crops by using PH, temperature and humidity sensors.
This paper present by Zhang S [9] an overview on how robotics, AI, IoT based methods can be used in agriculture to increase productivity, efficiency, sustainability. To combat challenges in traditional farming, farmers have started to use technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of things. This paper also talks about the latest technologies that can be used in agriculture, giving more focus on AI, IoT, Robotics. It gives us more insights about how robotics are incorporated to increase productivity of the crops. For instance, robotics automation can be used in automating weed removal after detecting the weeds using YOLOv3 algorithm. Thereby, combining all the technologies IoT, AI and Robotics Hydroponics can be implemented which gives us a higher yield of crops.
This paper by Abdel-Basset M et al., [10] presents insights on CV algorithms involved in smart agriculture for weed detection and removal. In farming, growing of weeds along with plants is natural and these weeds hamper the growth of plants in farm lands. To remove these weeds different methods can be used including usage of herbicides, pesticides, insecticides. But usage of all these chemicals are harmful to human health. To reduce the usage of chemicals, non-chemical methods should be adopted. One among these methods is detection of weeds using CV algorithm and removal of weeds using laser or any other non-chemical methods that are harmless to human health. One of the examples of CV algorithm is YOLOv3 [You only look once version 3] which helps us by detecting all the unwanted weeds from the crop, and helps in removing weeds by using robotic automation or by thermal power.

III.	METHODOLOGY
Hydroponics is a plant system, where all the plants are grown naturally without using soil. The plants are grown with the help of rocks, pebbles and granules. These types of plants are grown as indoor plants or as terrace farming. The nutrients that are required from the plants are supplied by dilute water with NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) fertilizers. Each type of plant requires different amounts/doses of NPK Solution. These diluted waters are stored inside a tank where the plants receive this water through pipes, where all the water from the tank is supplied periodically to the plants when needed. 
Hydroponics also consists of several sensors such as PH sensor, Temperature, Moisture sensor. The PH sensor plays a vital role in sensing the PH of the nutrients in the water. The PH of nutrients plays a pivotal role in plants, higher PH may cause damage to plants as they are acidic in nature and lower PH may also lead to decline in plant growth with deficiency in nutrients if they are basic in nature. Therefore the PH of the diluted water with all the necessary NPK fertilizers must be balanced, thereby a PH sensor is used to accomplish this task. 
 A temperature sensor is used in hydroponics where all the temperatures of the plants are managed by a temperature sensor. Different plants grow under different temperatures. Extreme heat or cold conditions may cause plants to wilt easily. It affects the growth of the plants. Different plants absorb nutrients in different temperatures. Therefore in order to monitor the environmental conditions for the efficient plant growth with good health, a temperature sensor is added. Figure.1 and figure.2 explains about the model components and technology selection.

 
Fig.1. Hydroponics System Components
Moisture sensor helps in monitoring the moisture content in the growing medium. Too much moisture content in the growing medium causes water clogging and makes the support materials wet thereby, it results in stagnation of water. Water stagnation leads to deficiency of absorbing nutrients by the plants. Moisture content in the plant leads to growth decline in plants and in severe cases lead to the death of the plants.
The Growth medium of the natural plants depends on soil for growth, and requires a large amount of water for sufficient growth of healthy plants. Natural plants growth rate is generally slow and thereby gives less yield but quality of the plant is good. It requires a large area of land for cultivation of Paddy crops, etc. the maintenance cost of natural plants is low. A huge disadvantage of natural plants is that there is a high cause for soil disease risk, soil erosion, and being prone to weed growth. The PH of the soil also varies depending on the different plants.
 
Fig 2: Technology Selection

On the other hand, Hydroponics growth medium depends on Nutrient rich solution for growth. It requires less amount of water for growth. It is a soilless cultivation of plants. The growth rate of the plant is high. Grows at a faster rate. Hydroponics plants give higher yield than other normal plants. It doesn’t require a large area of land. It requires only less area of land, such as it can be planted in terrace, indoor farming. The maintenance cost of the hydroponics is high such as the cost of the tubes, pipes, sensors and the motors are high. Regular maintenance needs to be done to avoid breakdown. The cost of these sensors are high and the repair cost of the motors are additional costs that makes the maintenance cost high. Soil erosion does not take place as it is a soilless cultivation of crops, therefore there is no risk of soil erosion and soil related diseases. The growth of weeds takes place at a little rate compared to natural plants. The PH of the nutrients is controlled by using a PH sensor therefore it is easily monitored and adjusted. Figure.3. explains about the proposed model architecture.
 
                   Fig 3: Architecture Diagram 
Manual picking of the weeds is very tough as it involves huge man power and energy. It is a time-consuming process therefore by combining all these sensors, YOLOv3 algorithms are also used, YOLOv3 (You only look once version 3) is an algorithm where the model is trained on various plants containing weeds. It can distinguish between the weeds and plants after data preprocessing steps. All the plants with weeds are collected in the data collection phase and the collected data are cleaned and preprocessed in the data preprocessing phase where it involves a main stage called data augmentation, the images of the plants are analyzed by performing many operations such as rotating, flipping - either horizontally or vertically all the images. Duplicate images are removed from the model. The Yolov3 model will be trained with 82 percent of data and will be tested with the remaining 18 percent of data.
Plant Growing Medium:  Every plant needs a growing medium to grow naturally, but for hydroponics the plant growing medium consists of vermiculture, coconut husk, pebbles, rocks which help the plant to have grip,typically it performs the function of a soil. The main function of soil is to have a grip over the plant. These help in upholding the plants and retain moisture for the growth of the plant.
Essential Nutrient Solutions: Hydroponics require essential nutrient solutions for their growth. It requires sufficient macro nutrients such as Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus nutrients for growth and several micro nutrients such as iron, magnesium and calcium. Proper amounts of nutrients need to be added in order to help each plant grow. Additional doses or large doses of NPK nutrients may lead to bad health and damage to plants. Proper dosage of the nutrients must be ensured.
Clean Water:  Water is essential for plants growth. The water must have a balanced PH between 5-6. The PH between 5-6 denotes that it is a neutral and natural water that suits various plant types. Contaminated water can lead to Crop or plant eradication.
Hydroponics Pots:  Hydroponics pots are a type of pots that are used to store the hydroponics plants. Inside the hydroponics pots, the plants are supported by pebbles, rocks for the support of the roots of a plant. 
Nutrient Tank:  Nutrient tank is a tank where all the nutrients are dissolved in water and are stored in this tank. The nutrients solutions from this tank are periodically supplied to the hydroponics plant for essential growth of the plant.
Hydroponics Pump/ motor and Tubes:  Hydroponics motor is required to pump water and essential nutrients from the nutrient solutions which are carried over by the tubes to the hydroponics plant. Hydroponic pump creates a hydraulic pressure  over the nutrient solution that helps in flowing of the nutrients through the tube without any delay. All the hydroponic pumps and tubes must be replaced within 2 years such that it does not cause any sudden damage to the plants.
Timer: Automates periodic watering and nutrient solution to the hydroponic plants to provide sufficient growth for the plant with good health.
             
IV.	RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
Data Collection:  Collection of Data is a crucial step in Data collection. Weeds Data Collection is used to identify the weeds, monitor the plant growth, and any type of anomaly present in the plants. This step involves various collections of weeds data that are used to determine the plants health. Captures high quality images of plants in hydroponics systems under various conditions such as infected, healthy and pest infected plants.
Loading dataset: Weed dataset is loaded into the model in order to train the model to identify the plants that consist of weeds. It is used to preprocess the weeds data. The collected dataset is loaded into the model to preprocess the data and to train the model in order to find the anomalies. These preprocessing steps help in standardizing the image by resizing the image.
Data Augmentation: Data Augmentation helps in adjusting the pixels, width, height and other parameters of the image in order to train the model. This step is done to improve model ability to detect the weeds and help prevent overfitting. It helps in increasing the model ability by rotating the images by various angles, adjusting pixels, brightness, color and all other physical features of the image. This step also includes a Tensorflow image generator that does image reshaping, rescaling and flipping the image.
Model Development: YOLOv3 algorithm (You only look once version 3) algorithm is used for faster object detection that identifies and classifies multiple weeds  in a plant. A plant may contain different types of weeds which are recognized by the YOLOv3 model where all types of weeds images of different plants are feeded as input, all the images are augmented by rotating, flipping at different angles and are analyzed at different intervals. It helps in detecting the weeds before time by analyzing the plants health and growth. Therefore with the help of the Yolov3 algorithm, the model helps in detecting and removing the weeds from the plant.
Model Deployment: The model finally predicts the output as weed identification as a final classification result. The model is deployed to make real world predictions. It helps in removing the weeds from the plants by identifying the weeds through the trained datasets, upon which the real weeds of the plants are tested to check for the predictions of the result. Thereby, the model's performance and accuracy is monitored and maintained.
The trained model is then fed with the new set of data to be tested, for predicting the correct output, that is, whether the model is able to identify the weeds in the plants. The accuracy and loss percentage of the model is then analyzed. Higher the accuracy and lower the loss the model is well trained and tested. Therefore, by adopting the YOLOv3 algorithm model the weeds in paddy crops will be detected successfully. Figure.4. shows about circuit diagram of hydroponics.

 
Fig 4. Circuit Diagram of Automating Hydroponics
 
Fig.5. Proposed Model Accuracy and Loss
Fig. 5.a denotes a decreasing Training loss, that indicates that the model’s learning rate is good and it fits the data correctly. The graph is decreasing with respect to Epoch, which indicates that the model is fitted properly and there is no overfit and underfit of data. The models learn efficiently from training data.
Fig 5. (b) denotes a decreasing Validation loss with respect to Epoch, which indicates that the model’s able to test and validate other data correctly. If Validation loss decreases along with the training loss it indicates that the model is able to predict accurately for new data. If validation loss increases with respect to Training loss it indicates overfitting. A decreasing training loss indicates that the model is learning and fitting the training data.  A low training loss does not always imply good generalization to unseen data (it might overfit).  If the validation loss decreases along with training loss, the model is learning effectively and generalizing well.  If the validation loss stagnates or increases while training loss decreases, it might indicate overfitting.

V.	CONCLUSION
The automation of the hydroponics system in removal of weeds in paddy crops is a modern approach in today’s agriculture. They are mainly used to reduce man labor, maintenance and operational costs, and encourage sustainability. The YOLOv3 model is used for object detection to detect weeds with utmost precision and accuracy, Laser systems are used to remove the weeds. The model’s accuracy is around 94% and performance, accuracy, precision, speed of this model is also far better compared to other traditional models. This research provides better detection, removal and also better accuracy. Future enhancement of this model is to use more newer versions of YOLO and aggregation of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging for better detection since they can detect even slightest difference better. Future enhancements in automating hydroponics are present in IoT, AI&ML. These enhancements tend to make the removal of weeds in paddy crops accurate and precise. More newer versions of YOLO, YOLOv5 or YOLOv8 can be used to get more accuracy and precision and also speed. Aggregation of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging can be used to detect even slightest differences between weeds and paddy crops for removal of weeds. They can also be used to detect weeds early i.e. during their growth which is difficult to detect manually. LiDAR can also be used to create 3D structures of a cultivation environment and they are very useful in situations when paddy crops and weeds are overlapped and they promote precise and accurate weed detection. IoT sensors and cameras can also be used to monitor weed growth in real-time. Alerts can also be provided to alert the removal system when weeds reach particular growth. IOT Thermal sensors can be used in future for burning the weeds after the identification of the weeds in the paddy crop using YOLO algorithms.

REFERENCES
[1] Baras T (2018)- “DIY Hydrophonics Gardens: How to design and build an inexpensive system for growing plants in water”.
[2] Green T (2020) -”Hydrophonics Garden: The beginner’s guide to easily build a sustainable hydroponic system at home. How to quickly start growing vegetables, fruits and herbs without soil - DIY Hydrophonics, Smart Creative Publishing.
[3] Walesworth W (2016) - “Hydrophonics: Everything you need to know to start an expert DIY Hydrophonic system at home, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
[4] Benton Jones Jr j (2016) -” Hydroponics-  A practical guide for the soilless grower”, CRC Press
[5] olankey SS, Akhtar S, Maldonado Al, Rodriquez-Fuentes H, Contreas JA, Reyes JM (2020) - “Urban horticulture: Necessity of the future”, BoD- Books on Demand.
[6] aviv M, Heinrich Leith J (2007) - “Soilless Culture: Theory and practice”, Elsevier.
[7] agheer A, Mohammed M, Riad K, Alhajhoj M (2020) - “A cloud-based IoT platform for precision control of soilless greenhouse cultivation”, Sensors(Basel).
[8] omar P, Kaur G (2021) - “Artificial Intelligence and IoT based technologies for sustainable farming and smart agriculture”, IGI Global.
[9] Zhang S, Liu B, Zhang C, Yang C (2024) - “ Artificial intelligence and Internet of Things for smart agriculture” , Frontiers Media SA.
[10] Abdel-Basset M, Hawash H, Abdel-Fatah L (2024) - “ Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things in smart farming”, CRC Press.                                                                Review Questions
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