Agriculture and Forest technologies with an investment of EUR 7.4 million will be exhibited in Valada do Ribatejo
04th September 2018
“There are four main digital technologies in the agenda of the ongoing digital (r)evolution in agriculture and forestry: the Internet of Things; the Artificial Intelligence; the Robotics and the Big Data. INESC TEC has skills, resources and experience in all these areas and has made important advancements in these sectors in the past few years. Our motto is based on the help that we can provide in order to shape this digital (r)evolution. That is why we want to present what we have been working on at the largest agricultural fair in the country”, explains André Sá, responsible for the INESC TEC’s Innovation Area, TEC4AGRO-FOOD.
The two projects related to forestry that will be exhibited are BIOTECFOR and FOCUS.
The exhibition stand of INESC TEC will have a robot, which is being developed by INESC TEC along with a Portuguese Forestry Association and two more Galician entities that will enable the cleaning of the forestry in the north of Portugal and in Galicia, thus reducing the effort of the operators and making these operations safer. The machines developed under the BIOTECFOR project will operate autonomously, even though they will be supervised by the operators and will be equipped with devices that cut the vegetation of the trees and preprocess it, thus reducing the transport cost to the processing site. With the biomass collected in these cleaning processes, the creation of new composite materials will become a reality. This project has an investment of around EUR 1.3 million.
How can a group of Portuguese researchers minimise the impact of the forestry operations, by reducing the CO2 emission and ensuring a great exploitation of forest resources that although renewable are scarce? Through sensors that monitor the operations productivity and the material flow throughout the chain. FOCUS was a European project led by INESC TEC with an investment of around EUR 4.1 million, which incorporated these sensors into a comprehensive solution that along with software modules allows to monitor operations in the forestry and to withstand the decision making in real time. The software will be exhibited in INESC TEC’s stand at the Agroglobal.
Concerning agriculture, the RoMoVi, Smart Farming and HERCULANO 4 projects will be presented at the Agroglobal.
RoMoVi is an agricultural robot that monitors hilly terrains such as the hillside vineyards, in a modular form and completely autonomous. This robot, whose creation represents an investment of over one million Euro, arose from the joint work of INESC TEC, TEKEVER and the Association for the Development of Viticulture in the Douro Region (ADVID). There are three camera systems in the RoMoVi: one is used for monitoring, the other one has RGB-D sensors and two with stereoscopy that represent the eyes of the robot. Besides these three systems, RoMoVi has also laser sensors and a differential GPS.
Smart Farming, which is more related to the Artificial Intelligence area, has the goal to optimise the agricultural production through an agronomic management tool that simplifies the agricultural processes, certain parameters and tasks related to the watering, fertilisation, crops and diseases by improving them. Smart Farming, which is applied to the smart precision agriculture, is being developed by INESC TEC, ProdFarmer, Esporão, Sociedade Agrícola da Herdade Maria da Guarda and the National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinarian Research (INIAV) with and investment of around EUR 1 million.
The slurry tanker for the smart precision agriculture, which was developed by INESC TEC along with HERCULANO (“Made by HERCULANO powered by INESC TEC”), will be presented on 5 September at 3:00 pm at the demonstration area in the field available at the Agroglobal. Applying at the right time, the right quantity, in the right place, through a letter of prescription, thus making it less wasteful and more effective, the slurry tanker is composed of a console with multiple agricultural tools, has automatic adjustment of the slurry application depending on the speed and has a sensor for pig and cow slurry, thus satisfying the most demanding European standards.
HERCULANO started to incorporate digital technologies in its products, in a partnership with INESC TEC, giving rise to the slurry tanker for the smart precision agriculture. The company, which creates and markets agricultural semitrailers, agricultural tools, innovative equipment and accessories for agriculture, forest and related areas, has the goal to incorporate digital technologies of a variable rate in its products. The goal is to have the possibility to contribute to the challenges of the global society, related to the food safety and to one sustainable agriculture and forest and to the national economy. That is why INESC TEC and HERCULANO will sign a collaboration protocol during AgroGlobal. _____________________________________________________________________________________
For more information:
Joana Coelho
Communication Service
INESC TEC
FEUP’s Campus
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias
4200-465 Porto
Portugal
T +351 22 209 4297
M +351 919 119 271
Porto, 4 September 2018