Accelerating the achievement of EU Green Deal Goals for pesticide and fertilizer reduction through AI, data and robotic technologies.

Objective

Due to a lack of a holistic approach combining physical and digital assets for optimal field performance and minimum environmental impact, AI models, data and autonomous robotic systems in crop care tasks have not reached a mature technological level. The conventional spraying methods result in excessive pesticide and fertilizer use, posing severe environmental impact - being responsible for soil, water and air pollution, and harming non-target plants, insects, animals and humans. Smart Droplets’ main objective is to advance both hardware and software capabilities to deliver a holistic system capable of translating large amounts of data into meaningful information and impactful spraying commands on the field. To demonstrate substantial impact on the Green Deal, Smart Droplets will implement Autonomous retrofit tractors with Direct Injection System (DIS) for intelligent spraying - avoiding exposure of farmers to hazardous chemicals. Through the combination of high-level technologies (>TRL 7), Smart Droplets adopts a hybrid approach for spraying operations, combining Data/AI/Digital Farm Twin technologies designed to translate data into actionable information, and real-time data collected from Field demonstrators evaluating and demonstrating optimised technologies in the real environments. Smart Droplets will exploit synergies with relevant stakeholders, and intensify Community & Capacity building through dedicated training programs designed for non-expert users of AI, data and robotics systems. The Smart Droplets Consortium consists of all agricultural AI, data and robotics value chain actors, and is well balanced in terms of expertise, entity type, and geographical distribution necessary to meet its objectives. Smart Droplets will demonstrate how autonomous robotic platforms, innovative spraying, digital twin and AI models, can deliver environmental, economic, regulatory, business, scientific, and societal benefits, assisting in the achievement of Green Deal goals.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robots
• natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
• agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
• natural sciencesphysical sciencesmolecular and chemical physics
• natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology

Keywords

• Digital Twins
• AI
• robotics
• Direction Injection Spraying
• autonomous navigation
• SLAM
• retrofit tractors
• hardware
• software
• data
• training
• stakeholder engagement
• multi-actor

Programme(s)

• HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space Main Programme
• HORIZON.2.4.5 - Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Topic(s)

• HORIZON-CL4-2021-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-09 - AI, Data and Robotics for the Green Deal (AI, Data and Robotics Partnership) (IA)

Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL4-2021-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (9)