GRoW (827511)

  https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/827511

  Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

  The first high-performance robotic system for automated harvesting of vegetables greenhouses

  SME instrument (EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020)

  autonomous vehicles  ·  fruit growing  ·  computer vision  ·  vegetable growing  ·  robotics

  2018-07-01 Start Date (YY-MM-DD)

  2018-12-31 End Date (YY-MM-DD)

  € 71,429 Total Cost

  Description

The objective of the project is to demonstrate technological and business viability of the robotic harvesting applied in greenhouse farming of tomatoes. To date no commercial product for automated operations on tomatoes is available because of complex R&D that a producer has to face for developing a device capable to handle this extremely damageable fruit. Metomotion has found solutions to all the challenging technical steps, thereby allowing profitable harvesting of tomatoes and making it possible to growers to harvest the fruits throughout the year and not being exposed to labor shortage. By doing so, the harvest speed is doubled and the labor costs are halved. Moreover, our GRoW (Greenhouse Robotic Worker) will alleviate agricultural employees from back breaking work, permitting them to switch to more elevated tasks. In the context of the Precision Farming approach, automation in the agricultural sector is particularly solicited and MetoMotion is offering a product capable to satisfy the most compelling needs of the growers. The core innovations brought by MetoMotion consist of: - Advanced 3D vision system to clearly identify ripe fruits among leaves and stems - Extensible multiple robotic arms to increase harvest speed - Touch sensitive terminals to avoid damage and loos of fruits - Fully autonomous vehicle hosting embedding a box for the automated packing of collected fruits First interactions with users have shown great interest toward GRoW product. Within Phase 1 project, we will further explore the customer base to provide a comprehensive estimation of commercial potential relevant to GRoW. To date, on extremely precautionary basis, we forecast MetoMotion’s production capacity of about 200 robots/year, generating revenues of about € 30 mln in 3 years of operation. This figure may be substantially reviewed in the course of the Phase 1 project.

  Complicit Organisations

1 Israeli organisation participates in GRoW.