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)
Período documentado: 2020-08-01 hasta 2022-01-31
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.
Status after year one
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.
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.
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.