BeeHome (953381)

  https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/953381

  Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

  A new automated beekeeping platform based on AI, computer vision, and precision robotics, designed to improve bee health, and increase pollination and honey production

  SME instrument (EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020)

  software  ·  computer vision  ·  apidology  ·  robotics  ·  apiculture

  2020-06-01 Start Date (YY-MM-DD)

  2022-05-31 End Date (YY-MM-DD)

  € 3,145,125 Total Cost

  Description

Pollination is crucial to life on the planet. Bees and other pollinators have thrived for millions of years, ensuring food security and nutrition, and maintaining biodiversity and vibrant ecosystems for plants, humans and the bees themselves. Globally, 75% of crops producing vegetables, fruits and seeds for human consumption depend on pollinators for sustained production, yield, and quality. In recent years, most countries in the world have reported high rates of disorders affecting their honeybee colonies. The seemingly unpredictable loss of bee colonies exacerbates the shortage of pollinators, which reached an unprecedented global rate of ~30% compared to 2%-3% a couple of decades ago. The device beekeepers rely on to manage bees and take care of their ongoing upkeep is a wooden box designed 150 years ago, the beehive we’re all accustomed to seeing in the field. This “technology” does not allow beekeepers to maintain healthy bees in the face of modern challenges like pests, diseases, and climate change. Furthermore, this is the technology utilized to pollinate 75% of global crops for 7 billion humans, resulting in the most extreme pressure bees have ever experienced. Beewise developed the Beehome platform, which is a modular commercial AI-powered apiary composed of hardware and software that fully automates beekeeping while optimizing pollination and honey production. The technology is not exclusive to honeybees and can support various species of bees that face extinction as well. The platform includes an automated robotic brood box management system, a computer vision-based monitoring system, AI-based decision making, an automated honey harvesting system and systems for pest control, feeding, and thermoregulation. The key objectives of the project are to optimize the software and the AI, to finalize the engineering of the hardware components, to validate the technology in a two-stage in-field testing and to obtain the CE mark for commercialization in Europe.

  Complicit Organisations

1 Israeli organisation participates in BeeHome.