Main questions to be answered: 

· What potential capabilities are needed in robotics & AI to grow largescale? 

· Do we need to introduce some standards in the agri-food sector for the faster integration of robotics & AI? 

WS Description: The food industry is an industry facing many current challenges, such as staff shortages, and increased costs of doing business, as well as longer-term challenges, such as feeding a growing population and environmental protection. 

AI & robotics are able to work on tasks such as rapid picking and placing of food items, and there is the potential to aid on a much larger scale. However, further testing and development of robotics and AI in a variety of environments is still needed. 

In this workshop we aim to look at the potential for robotics and AI to transform agi-food, the advantages and the challenges. Here we will bring together experts in robotics and agrifood, this will include participants in the EU projects CANOPIES and OpenDR. Besides this, a panel discussion with all the speakers will also be organised, with the opportunity to send questions to the workshop host. 

Intended outcome: Workshop covering material new to ERF that the Robotics community should engage with, Information about community involvement and services offered (e.g. DIHs, open calls, platforms, …) 

Approach: Discussion panel – 50 min 

Dynamic section with the attendess – 30 min 

Contributors: Agenda: 

Welcome and introduction 

Robotics research Presentations- Robotics and AI in Precision Agriculture 

Robotics Companies Presentations – Robotics, AI and Autonomous Systems for the agrifood sector 

Robotics research Presentations – agROBOfood EU project: how to build a European ecosystem for the effective adoption of robotic technologies in the agri food sector (tentative) 

Robotics Companies Presentations – Robotic application in agrifood 

Panel discussion with all the speakers with open-ended questions and interactive activity (30 minutes) 

Organisers: 

· Sarah Terreri, euprojects@pal-robotics.com, PAL Robotics

· Gizem Bozdemir, euprojects@pal-robotics.com, PAL Robotics

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

— agROBOfood: Business-Oriented Support to the European Robotics and Agri-food Sector, towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs in Robotics, https://agrobofood.eu/project/ 

— A Collaborative Paradigm for Human Workers and Multi-Robot Teams in Precis 

Areas mainly addressed: Agri-Food, Robotics and AI/Big Data Value, Autonomy, Collaborative Robots and cloud robotics 

Main questions to be answered: 

· How can we bridge the gap between theory and practice in agricultural robotics? Are the developed solutions robust enough for real-world applications? 

· How can we raise the acceptance of robotics solutions from farmers? Why don’t farmers use the cool tools we have in our labs? 

· Does the application of robotics research translate to real-world impact? Or are we performing research for the sake of research? 

WS Description: Regardless of their great progress, agricultural robotics don’t make it in the fields, but rather remain at a demonstrator level. This gap between today’s technology and what is actually adopted by the farmers needs to be investigated and ultimately bridged. 

This requires robustness and advances in technical topics that surpass current state-of-the-art. Non-technical topics need to be addressed, including cost-benefit analysis of agricultural robots, training of workers, safety and financing. The target audience primarily consists of agricultural robotics and precision agriculture researchers, developers and industrial stakeholders. This workshop aims to a) form a connection between these communities, while introducing more researchers to precision agriculture; b) become a hub among technology providers and researchers, for applying technologies provided from research into the field. 

Intended outcome: Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc, Workshop on recent developments in technology or applications, Workshops engaging non-roboticists to understand needs/goals (policy, commercial, technical) 

Approach: This 80min workshop will be composed of four invited talks and a panel session. The experts’ talks will set the pace of the discussion, covering topics of interest bridging agricultural robotics in research and real-world applications. A panel discussion will involve speakers and the audience where questions by members of the community will be discussed. The main discussion points and outcomes will be interactively captured by means of Miro boards and mind mapping techniques. This will result in a co-creation design session, which will be exploited for identifying hindering aspects of the current approaches as well as new opportunities for the future. 

Contributors: — Philipp Kamps, AgXeed, Netherlands. 

— Andrea Gasparri, Roma Tre University, Italy. 

— Jeroen Wolters, Smart Agri Technology, the Netherlands. 

— Spyros Fountas, Professor in Digital Agriculture, Agricultural University of Athens / Co-founder, EdenLibrary SME, Greece. 

Further information: LinkedIn event page: https://www.linkedin.com/events/robotsfortheagri-foodindustry-f7028647977753706496/ 

Organisers: 

· Lazaros Nalpantidis, lanalpa@dtu.dk, DTU – Technical University of Denmark

· Tsampikos Kounalakis, tsko@teknologisk.dk, Danish Technological Institute 

· SpyrosFountas, sfountas@aua.gr, Agricultural University of Athens & EdenLibrary 

· Frits van Evert, frits.vanevert@wur.nl, Wageningen University & Research