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Greenhouse Robotic Worker - The first high-performance robotic system for automated harvesting of vegetables in greenhouses

Project description

Growing robots to pick tomatoes

To meet increasing demand for quality produce year-round, greenhouses are used to grow vegetables. However, the vegetable greenhouse production sector is highly labour intensive. The EU-funded GRoW project may have the solution. It is robotics. Greenhouse robotic workers can halve the costs and reduce the amount of labour required by an astounding 80 %. The core innovations include an advanced 3D vision system to clearly identify ripe fruits among leaves and stems, touch-sensitive terminals to avoid damage and loss of fruits, and extensible multiple robotic arms to increase harvest speed.

Objective

The goal of current project is to realize the technological scale-up of the first ever efficient and cost-effective robotic harvesting system applied to greenhouse farming of tomatoes.

In fact, to date, no commercial product for automated operations on
tomatoes is available because of several technological constraints linked with the unstable environment of the indoor farming, as well as with the difficulty to grasp malleable and easily damageable fruits.

Metomotion has found solutions to all the challenging technical steps, thereby enabling profitable harvesting of tomatoes and making it possible to growers to harvest the fruits throughout the year and not being
exposed to the labor shortage.

By doing so, the harvesting costs are halved and labor reduced by 80%. In the context of thePrecision Farming approach, automation in the agricultural sector is particularly solicited and Metomotion is offering a
product capable to satisfy the most compelling needs of the growers.

The core innovations brought by Metomotion consist of:
- Advanced 3D vision system to clearly identify ripe fruits among leaves and stems
- Extensible multiple robotic arms to increase harvest speed
- Touch sensitive terminals to avoid damage and loos of fruits
- Fully autonomous vehicle embedding boxing system for the automated packing of collected fruits.

The activities of the Phase 2 projects are related with the enhancement of the prototype performance through optimization of both hardware parts like robotic arm and AGV, as wells as related SW and User Interface. Interactions with users occurred during Phase 1 project have shown immense interest toward GRoW product from all over the world (about
100 expressions of interest collected), thus paving the basis for the successful commercialization of the product. A detailed
commercialization strategy will be developed in the course of this project to allow global sales.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

METOMOTION LTD
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 067 340,63
Address
THE TRENDLINES BUILDING 17 T'CHELET STREET MISGAV BUSINESS PARK
2161401 KARMIEL
Israel

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 953 343,75
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