A new Agricultural Industry Standard for Autonomous Plant Production

Project Information

RoBoCut

Grant agreement ID: 954321

DOI

10.3030/954321

Project closed

EC signature date 21 April 2020

Start date 1 May 2020

End date 30 April 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 3 533 925,00

EU contribution

€ 2 473 747,00

Coordinated by

ROBOTEC PTC GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RoBoCut (A new Agricultural Industry Standard for Autonomous Plant Production)

Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2022-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

RoBoTec PTC GmbH is a young company and already highly awarded SME specialised in the automation of breeding and mass propagation of plants via plant tissue culture. Based in northern Germany, RoBoTec PTC GmbH was founded as a spin-off of Bock Bio Science GmbH, a professional tissue culture laboratory and nursery, service laboratory for cloning and propagation. In the 100 years long company history several market-disrupting technologies have been developed by Bock. Now the RoBoTec PTC GmbH makes a further step to become a technology leader and system supplier for autonomous in vitro plant cultivation by developing and marketing the RoBo®Cut. As a unique solution for in vitro plant propagation of high-quality plant species the innovative system uses 3D image recognition and deep learning software, able to recognise complex plant structures, cut them without contact and place them in new culture vessels - all automatically in a completely sterile production cell. Potential customers rethink laboratories as the RoBo®Cut helps to achieve new levels of quality and efficiency. Better work planning and increased productivity will be possible, but the decisive aspect here is, that the system offers the opportunity to bring plant propagation back to Europe, which has been handed over to low-wage countries due to cost pressure. Environmental costs, process risks and a considerable transfer of knowledge can now be avoided. As a first mover we subsequently want to equip all plant laboratories with the RoBo®Cut. system as a standard equipment for PTC plant propagation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We further developed the industrial prototype system to achieve high reliability, high throughput and high product quality. Software and hardware adaption requirements were analysed, and the specifications validated. The first step was to refactor the software infrastructure and the interprocess-communication, implement quality assurance processes and optimise the image processing software and the AI component. The implementation is currently taking place in our industrial prototype.
Furthermore, sterility tests were performed and repeated for several weeks to ensure that no contamination can get inside the machine and all surfaces are sterile. A combination of positive internal air pressure, airflow filters and UV-light sterilisation is used. The sterility of the airflow and all surfaces inside the RoBo®Cut system were investigated with excellent results.
The realisation of an optimised and modularised production series is currently being prepared. Pilot projects using the industrial prototype underline that RoBoCut enables to automate breeding and mass propagation of plants via plant tissue culture, as well as to onshore the production into the EU.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

RoBo®Cut is an autonomous system to change lab processes from manual to automated mass propagation of plants and goes far beyond the state of the art. It provides a technical solution with economic benefits for the European economy. For the first time a holistic approach is used for plant tissue culture: It is shifting from the previously purely manual multiplication of plant material to an automated sequence, thus reducing multiple risks such as logistic problems or human contaminations, while at the same time considerably increasing efficiency. A unique IT solution determines the necessary cutting lines for the propagation of plants and divides touchless and 100% sterile by laser technology; this in turn leads to shorter cultivation cycles and better plant growth. Up to now, there has been no sterile automation in the biotechnical propagation of plants and employees at a workplace have to make about 30 autonomous decisions per minute before cutting due to the particular characteristics of living plants. Due to algorithms for multidimensional recognition and processing, the programming of a system is now possible for highly complex surface structures and textures. Just as new is the production cell as a clean room. Long transport distances or contamination and the associated loss of production are thus avoided and repetitive accurate efficiency and added value on site are increased.
RoBoTecs mission is to produce better plants by autonomous, AI-driven automated and sterile production systems for the world’s plant propagators. With RoBo®Cut we want to reduce CO2 emissions and develop sustainable production systems that enable our customers to produce onshore in and for their own markets.

The managing owners Friederike and Stephan von Rundstedt in front of the RoBo®Cut prototype system.