Periodic Reporting for period 2 - agROBOfood (agROBOfood: Business-Oriented Support to the European Robotics and Agri-food Sector, towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in Robotics)
Reporting period: 2020-08-01 to 2022-01-31
After year 1 of the project the current status of the agROBOfood project can be summarized as:
• network building with implementing the regional approach with regional and national contact points, setting up procedures to be a member of the network, interesting them through an open call and developing a self-assessment test for DIH/CC.
• visibility of the network by activation of all our communication tools like the website, social media, newsletter and Basecamp. We also organized or dedicated (digital)meetings and contributed to the international community by publications, presentations and participate in RODIN, OpenDEI, CEMA, ROS, EU-Robotics and EU networks.
• start with loading the network with ecosystem, technical and business services. These are provided to the IIE. DIH/CCs in the agROBOfood network started to learn from each other approaches. To support this we performed quite some ‘white spot’ analysis. Think of contributions to trainings, platforms, open data, standardization and specific DIH/CC needs.
• to demonstrate and test the needs for robotics for agri-food systems and the agROBOfood network we worked already on 7 Innovation Experiments who all have a DIH mentor. On the website it is possible for DIH/CC to present showcases.
• to make the network sustainable we started with looking to other examples, the field of existing organizations who have interest in agri-food robotics and to understand what the specific character of the agROBOfood network should be. We benefit from the cooperation with the Industrial Advisory Board, RODIN and the SmartAgriHub experiences.