Periodic Reporting for period 3 - agROBOfood (agROBOfood: Business-Oriented Support to the European Robotics and Agri-food Sector, towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in Robotics)
Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2024-02-29
The agROBOfood project (grant number 825395) will develop a pan-European network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) and Competence Centers to stimulate implementation of high tech robotic concepts for the agri-food sector and to demonstrate their applicability under practical circumstances. To overcome fragmentation of organizations working on digitalization in Europe the EU promotes the concept of Digital Innovation Hubs and related Competence Centers. DIHs are one stop shops that are based upon technology infrastructures (Competence Centers) and provide access to the latest knowledge, expertise and technology to support their customers with piloting, testing and experimenting with digital innovations. DIHs also provide business and financial support to implement these innovations, if needed across the value chain. As proximity is considered crucial, they act as a first regional point of contact, a doorway, and strengthen the innovation ecosystem. A key success factor is that agROBOfood already covers 24 European countries just through the 39 consortium partners and 41 associated partners at the start of the project. agROBOfood works in Europe with 7 Regional Cluster Coordinators with an ‘assignment’ to establish a DIH on robotics per country. In this way we can take care of differences in degree of organization and are able to work with ‘one-stop-shops’. The network is expected to grow during the project and will sustain after the agROBOfood project will be finished. A prerequisite is that members of the network will be pro-active and are willing to learn from each other to professionalize the services for customers. Since agROBOfood is not the only DIH network on digitalization we are liaised to the CSA-RODIN partners DIH2, Trinity, RIMA and DIH-Hero, and to AGRI related projects like SmartAgriHub and IoF2020. The agROBOfood network will be able to deliver a variety of ecosystem, technical and business services. We will use these basics and professionalize our agROBOfood partners to able to deliver these services in the robotic field of expertise and to their customers. We will stimulate all the DIH to be able to deliver the full set of services to their customers. We support them by specific training and education and where needed we can develop a specific robot dedicated services. In essence we will load the agROBOfood network with knowledge and experience on a variety of services. To demonstrate the value of the agROBOfood network and robotics in agri-food system we work with Innovation Experiments (IE) and Industrial Challenges (IC). In an IEs a small group of SME’s, startups and industrial partners work cross border together. Based on relative mature technology they work on and demonstrate robotic solutions. They also experiment with agROBOfood services and end users. We started with 7 IE and we will expand the IE and IC by having 3 open call rounds, with a total budget of 8 M€. The first open call is launched in March 2020.
The final report describes the overall objectives, strategy and main achievements of the agROBOfood project. After an introduction of the concept of Digital Innovation Hubs, its stakeholders, and the relevance of robotics for the agri-food sector, the establishment and growth of the network of DIHs is explained. Success factors were the adoption of the regional approach with seven regional cluster coordinators and the opportunity to work with attractive open calls for innovation experiments. The network has been supported by using the following tools: website and portal, social media on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, organizing events, newsletter, Github for technology mapping and access to funding information. Services are the main product the DIHs deliver. The development in the categorization of services and how it is represented in a service catalogue and on the website is clarified. The lessons learned of the service delivery in the context of the agROBOfood project are also described. Finally, the future of the sustained agROBOfood network after the end of the project is explained. Not only are the mission, vision, added value, main products, government and initial business model described, attention is also paid to the changing environment in robotics and DIHs to illustrate the role the agROBOfood network is expected to play.
To demonstrate a variety of innovative robotic solutions and to test service delivery of the agROBOfood network eleven innovation experiments and nine industrial challenges are reported on. These experiments were all selected as part of an open call process. Included are four experiments with robotic solutions in the post-harvest food production chain, three in harvesting and thinning, one in livestock and a vast majority of twelve experiments focused on crop care management. Lessons learned from these experiments are also described.
To demonstrate a variety of innovative robotic solutions and to test service delivery of the agROBOfood network eleven innovation experiments and nine industrial challenges are reported on. These experiments were all selected as part of an open call process. Included are four experiments with robotic solutions in the post-harvest food production chain, three in harvesting and thinning, one in livestock and a vast majority of twelve experiments focused on crop care management. Lessons learned from these experiments are also described.
On strategic level agROBOfood is contributing to the Multi Annual Roadmap for Robotics. In these discussions we bring in the vision that agri-food network systems will become more diverse, flexible, responsive and transparent and that stakeholders should have the ability to also choose for robotic solutions that can cooperate in an environment where also service providers and humans work. To increased deployment of robotics in agri-food the target of agROBOfood is to involve end-users and SMEs through supporting innovation experiments and market ready robotics solutions throughout all regions using existing channels and influencers, such as cooperatives, advisors, CC, regional clusters and DIHs. In year 1 of agROBOfood we focused on strengthening and expanding the network of existing DIHs and CCs facilitating them approaching more users. The instrument of the open call attracts new IH/CCs, SME’s and startups. agROBOFood is more dedicated to SME’s than to reaching farmers. Mutual learning and border-crossing approaches are experienced in the IIE and in finding white spots. This is all supported by our communication and dissemination strategy. The impact of the communication activities is already good. To create impact through platforms CEMA organized specific discussions, EU-Robotics is integrated in the RODIN activities and the agROBOfood Industrial Advisory Board members have become a member of the topic group for agri-food robotics. Fraunhofer and TU-Delft actively stimulated to create a dedicated ROS-Agriculture working group. Impact for the European robotics industry is to communicate on all levels the need and added value of the agROBOfood network. Triple Helix approaches are unique for the European market. Cooperation between large industry, SMEs, startups, NGO and knowledge institutions is stimulated by having our regional approach of DIH/CCs. Large industry is involved in the Industrial Advisory Board. Communication strategy has been placed in position. Demonstration, best practice and training activities needs further improvement in the coming reporting periods.