PHOTONFOOD

Robotnik participates in the PHOTONICS APPLIED IN THE AGRO-FOOD CHAIN (PHOTONFOOD) project funded by the Call for MISSIONS of CDTI and the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

The overall objective of the PHOTONFOOD project is to investigate the application of photonic technologies in the agri-food chain to address the major challenges facing society, such as supplying food to a growing population with an efficient use of resources, reducing losses and waste, improving food quality and safety as well as transparency in the chain and promoting the development of technology in this sector to improve its positioning and competitiveness for export.

PHOTONFOOD was born from the grouping of companies from the meat, fruit and vegetable, photonic technology and robotics sectors.

The companies forming the consortium have a wide experience in their sectors and have carried out several innovation actions and technological development projects that led them to their current position in the market. On the other hand, the consortium has established an alliance with AINIA (Centro Tecnológico Industria Agroalimentaria), and with the UPV – Polytechnic University of Valencia that will contribute with their experience and research capacity to complete the necessary capabilities to carry out the project successfully.

PHOTONFOOD project (MIG-20221073) is funded by the Spanish Center for Technological Development and Innovation E.P.E. (CDTI) through the call “Science and Innovation Missions 2022” as part of the State Program to Catalyze Innovation and Business Leadership of the State Plan for Scientific Research and Innovation 2021-2023, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The start date of the project is November 2022 and it will be completed in June 2025, with a budget of 4,450,016.00 € and a grant of 3,033,809.37 €.

Robotnik has a general objective in terms of research and evaluation of 2D and 3D vision technologies, and hyperspectral vision for the identification and collection of sensitive fruits in crop fields. To do this, Robotnik will investigate technologies and intelligent algorithms for autonomous navigation and perception of the environment and of the fruit, in addition to developing a demonstrative robotic prototype with the aim of carrying out unassisted fruit harvesting in the field and in the greenhouse.

Robotnik’s mobile manipulator robot RB-VOGUI+ will perform agricultural tasks such as autonomous navigation in the crop field, selection of blueberries for the detection of the ripeness point of the fruits and harvesting of the blueberries that satisfy the requirements of such inspection.