Robotics in Precision Agriculture & Harvesting

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Project cluster relation: Yes: BACCHUS (H2020) bacchus-project.eu [represented from the workshop organizers] 

Canopies (H2020) canopies-project.eu 

Rob4Crops (H2020) robs4crops.eu 

PestNu (H2020) pestnu.eu 

Areas mainly addressed: Agri-Food 

Main questions to be answered: 

· How precise can robots become in precision agriculture? Current performances and KPIs from invited projects. 

· What are the main challenges and current impediments in precision agriculture & harvesting? Latest research results. 

· What is the future of robotics in agriculture? Stakeholder’s input. 

WS Description: With the growing population and climate change, agricultural productivity is unlikely to meet the increased demand for food. Besides the increasing pressure to produce more, there is an overall need for higher quality and sustainable cultivation. Precision agriculture combined with intelligent robotic technologies for inspection, intervention and harvesting can push to that direction. Intelligent systems are becoming the go-to solution towards precision agriculture, while many farmer operations are already transitioning to full autonomy. To meet the future demands, however, significant progress is required regarding the cognitive and mechatronic capabilities of the robotic agents. This workshop we bring together related EU projects to discuss their views towards these goals, what they have achieved so far and how the stakeholders envision their future with robots. 

Intended outcome: Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc 

Approach: The workshop is conducted as a three-part gamified approach. 

i. First, six keynote speakers, from both academia/research and industry, will share their perspective in a 5 minute impulse talks on one or more of the topics mentioned above. The audience will be asked to vote through their phone, on which of the 3 questions they would like to engage more. 

ii. This is followed by Group work session. The audience are divided into groups (3 or 6 depending on attendance), based on their votes. Each group is assigned one of the questions and 2 or 1 ‘speakers’. The goal of each group is to discuss the topic, formulate the relevant challenges and come up with possible answers. In each group there will be an organizer who will post the key findings during the discussion to the main screen through their phone, which will show a live ‘scoreboard’ from each group with the results as short sentences. The score will be the enumeration of the posts from each group. 

iii. The third part of the workshop would be a panel discussion, involving the speakers, the organizers and the audience, based on the input provided on the board. The goal would be to summarize the findings of the group work and enable feedback from the audience. 

iv. Finally, the findings of the workshop are wrapped-up by the organizers 

00:00 – 00:05 Opening comments by the organizers 

00:05 – 00:35 6 Impulse talks (5 min each) 

00:35 – 01:00 Group Discussion 

01:05 – 01:15 Panel Discussion 

01:15 – 01:20 Wrap-up of findings by the organizers 

Contributors: Ria Pechlivani (Researcher C’ Center for Research & Technology Hellas, coordinator of PestNu) [confirmed] 

Marc Hanheide (prof. of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems, University of Lincoln – Director of EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Agri-Food Robotics, participant of BACCHUS) [confirmed] 

Remigio Berruto (prof. of optimization in agricultural operations & Agro-food supply chain, University of Torino, end-user of BACCHUS) [confirmed] 

Nikos Frangakis (Director of Innovation Business Unit at iKnowHow SA, Technology Transfer Provider of PestNu) [confirmed] 

Panagiotis Karagiannis (Researcher in Robotics, University of Patras, participant of robots4crops) [confirmed] 

Prof. Andrea Gasparri (as. Prof. University of Roma, coordinator of Canopies) [confirmed] 

Organisers: 

· Fotis Dimeas, dimeasf@ece.auth.gr, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

· Zoe Doulgeri, doulgeri@ece.auth.gr, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 

· DimitrisGiakoumis, dgiakoum@iti.gr, Centre for Reasearch & Technology Hellas

Event Timeslots (1)

Room 106 – Floor 1
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14 March - Agri-Food
Fotis Dimeas