Atos (ATOS)
- Spain
Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with over 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of over € 11 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions. Atos Research & Innovation (ARI), R&D node of Atos, is a point of world reference in innovation for the whole Atos group. Atos participates in R&D projects in national or international consortia that enrich Atos' technological portfolio.
ATOS is the coordinator of FlexiGroBots, involving three different teams specialised in various domains related to AI, ML, Computer Vision, robotics, EO data, among others. Atos actively participates in the requirements analysis and architecture work while also coordinates the development of the platform and specific capabilities on robotic mission control, computer vision, and application of geospatial data. Finally, Atos is the communication manager of the project thanks to its expertise and capabilities.
CSIC – Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
- Spain
Largest public multidisciplinary research organisation in Spain. Its mission is to promote, coordinate, develop, and disseminate multidisciplinary scientific and technological research to contribute to economic, social, and cultural development. The Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR), is one of the biggest Research Centres focused on Robotics, Automation and Perception in Spain. The CAR is particularly well positioned to lead their ambitious work plan, nurturing the studies in the fields of Automation, Perception and Robotics at its possible highest levels, by using their excellent conceptual and instrumental resources. The CAR activities are organised around the key scientific technical domains: Intelligent Supervision and Control, Artificial Perception and Robotics.
CSIC acts as technical coordinator of FlexiGroBots. In addition, leads the WP focused on “Requirements, architecture and standardisation” as well as tasks related to the demonstrator components. CSIC provides its knowledge as a contributor to various tasks.
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Belgium
CEPS is one of the leading European think tanks, constantly ranked among the top ten non-US think tanks, focusing on EU affairs. Over the years, CEPS has amply demonstrated its ability to anticipate trends and to analyse policy questions well before they become topics of general discussion. CEPS is actively involved in research and consultancy work in a variety of fields and themes of interest for the EU, from better regulation and digital policy to labour market, employment and education, from environmental, energy and climate policy to neighbourhood policy and human rights, from financial markets development to justice and home affairs, from innovation policy to industrial policy.
CEPS main contribution focuses on the Ethical, Legal, Socio-Economic (ELSE) research and guidelines for the FlexiGroBots platform. In addition assesses the pilots based on the EU’s ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI to be able to develop recommendation for the AI community.
Bodegas Terras Gauda (TER)
- Spain
Bodegas Terras Gauda, SA was founded in 1990 to produce white wines with native varieties under DO Rías Baixas, one of the five DD.OO. of Galicia, Spain. The DO Rias Baixas currently has more than 200 wineries, among which Terras, as a private company, is the number one in volume and annual turnover. In addition to its participation in numerous national projects, Terras has experience in participating in European projects, combining advances in research with national and international expansion. Terras currently farms around 120 ha of vineyards in the DO Rias Baixas with different plantation frameworks, as well as vineyards located on gentle slopes, on plains or on steep slopes.
Within FlexiGroBots, Terras is involved on the use case related to vineyards with a special focus on the demonstration on the specific plots for the development of the pilot where the effectiveness of ground robots and drones will be verified, and their comparison with control plots. TERRAS also participates in defining the requirements. Furthermore, it actively participates in the evaluation and validation of the pilot.
Wageningen University & Research (WUR)
- Netherlands
A top-class university, ranking among the world's leading institutions in the food, agriculture and environmental domains. Within WUR, the Information Technology Group is doing research on the topics of smart systems development, and system-of-systems engineering. In this context, they focus on software engineering, robotics, data science, and socio-technical systems. In the last years, the group has rapidly grown and developed a solid research agenda on smart systems engineering which is also aligned with the Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility (UARSF) and the Social Artificial Intelligent Drones (SAID) Lab of Wageningen University and Research.
WUR contributes to the UAVs perception and decision support system developing vision-based artificial intelligence and data-driven approaches for the early detection of Botrytis cinerea within Pilot 1 - Vineyards. Also, contributes to the platform requirements and architecture; pilots methodology, alignment and follow-up; and to several tasks in WP3 due to its experience in aerial mission planning, optimal image acquisition with multiple UAVs, image data pre-processing, very high-resolution images generation. Finally, WUR leads dissemination task.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd (VTT)
- Finland
A state owned and controlled non-profit limited liability company established by law and operating under the ownership steering of the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy. VTT is an RTO whose activities are focused on three areas: Knowledge intensive products and services, Smart industry and energy systems, and Solutions for natural resources and environment.
VTT leads the Pilot 2, which focuses on integrated pest management of oil-plant crops and silage harvesting. VTT is the lead of business stakeholders, goals, scenarios task, and in platform related it is actively participating on the requirement definition, data sharing and agriculture data space implementations, drone/robot collaboration, and image analysis services.
ART 21 (ART)
- Lithuania
An AgriFood technology innovation house leading private high-tech innovation development in the Baltic states, solely focused on solutions for the agriculture, food and associated industries. ART21 has extensive hands-on experience working in advanced ICT areas such as AI and data analytics, IoT and sensors, Hyperspectral and Raman spectrometry, drone utilization and GIS-based applications, distributed systems and Blockchain, industrial ERP systems, etc.
Within FlexiGroBots, ART21 is actively participating and contributing to tasks under Pilot 3 by leading piloting activities in Lithuania, in close collaboration with use case partner BioSense, as well as performing technical development in regard to remote sensing technology utilization, data analytics and application of novel approaches and techniques. ART21 is also responsible for leading WP7 focused on dissemination, communication, exploitation and business models.
MTECH Digital Solutions (MTE)
- Finland
Digital solutions provider specialised in the bio economy, with long-term experience as a partner of agricultural breeding and advisor organisations and as aprovider of online services and ICT solutions for farmers. MTE provides MyFarm, a web-based solution offering farmers and advisors’ access to modern farm management tool for cattle, crop production, and even financial management.
MTE provides its state of art tool for creating precision farming tasks for Pilot 2. In general, the efforts of MTE within FlexiGroBots aim to clarify the transition towards more autonomous farming machinery from the farm and management point of view. Further MTE aims to clarify the changes required for farm management information systems providers to support the future development.
Probot OY (PRO)
- Finland
High-tech robot-company found in 2006 dedicated to building and integrating automation systems for the customers needs. The company has experience in machine design and building as well as optimizing existing systems by modifying the hardware or software.
Within FlexiGroBots, Probot takes part in Pilot 2, focusing in the pest management of oil-plant crops and silage harvesting. The company focus especially on the application integration for the mobile robot system by reusing existing technology and robot platforms.
International Data Spaces (IDSA)
- Germany
IDSA’s role in FlexiGroBots is to support and guide on the implementation of an agriculture data space for robotics. IDSA participates in the data architecture definition and how to implement the IDS reference architecture following the design principles for data space building. IDSA supports the definition of interoperability, metadata, and data exchange mechanisms required and standards
Agrosmart (AGS)
- Latvia
An AgriFood technology-focused SME working on developing, implementing and providing farmers and the wider agriculture industry with efficient, sustainable and innovative ICT solutions. The company has expertise in sustainable and precision agriculture, data management and resource planning, data analysis and machine learning, sensor and robotic solution integration, system interoperability, remote sensing solution utilization, etc. The company is the official distributor of AgroSmart digital farm and agriculture industry management software products for the Latvian market, as well as a broker of other agriculture-related innovative solutions, providing custom adaptations according to customer needs.
Agrosmart is leveraging its experience in facilitating international agrifood technology transfer, development and adaptation. The company actively contributes to Pilot 3 for high value crop farming. Agrosmart also contributes to project result dissemination and communication activities under, extending the outreach of the project to potential customers, industry partners and public stakeholders in Latvia and the wider Baltic region.
AgriFood Lithuania (AFL)
- Lithuania
Digital Innovation Hub “AgriFood Lithuania” (legal name Smart IT Cluster) is a non-profit organization bringing together major research, business and public stakeholders in Lithuania for the common mission of transforming agriculture, food and associated sectors with digital-based innovations. Their mission is to contribute towards achieving the vision outlined in the EU Declaration of “A smart and sustainable digital future for European agriculture and rural areas”. As the only agriculture and food-focused DIH in Lithuania, the Hub is extensively working with and promoting breakthrough technology applications in AgriFood.
Within FlexiGroBots, AgriFood DIH participatesin Pilot 3 activities in the role of pilot partner and facilitator in Lithuania. The DIH also contributes to pilot assessment, outreach to stakeholders and potential customers, and pilot result exploitation after project end. Based on its expertise, they lead the task on technology transfer and demonstrator roll-out.
Zeleni hit (ZEL)
- Serbia
Zeleni hit offers services in the areas of horticulture and arable farming, contributing to R&D in fruit, vegetable, flower, herb and arable production. The company helps farms in increasing the yields, crop resistance and sustainability. Zeleni hit offers the services of planning, operating and monitoring all activities on the field, and operates state-of-the-art farms equipped with latest technologies for fertiliser and pesticide application and harvesting, where its R&D activities take place. These farms will be used for testing the technologies developed in FlexiGroBots project.
Zeleni hit serveS as the pilot demonstrator for technologies developed within Pilot 3. Its blueberry farm will host the agricultural UGVs and UAVs developed by BioSense and Art21. Also, Zeleni hit’s experiences and the domain expertise will be crucial for setting up the experiments along with the production constraints and specific requirements.
Seresco (SER)
- Spain
SERESCO is a Spanish company engaged in the development of software solutions and the provision of services within the scope of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). SERESCO has wide experience in the development, maintenance and migration of applications and systems related to the Rural Environment. In this area, the company has developed a software platform called Cultiva Decisiones with the aim of helping to materialize the concept of precision agriculture, making it easier for farmers to take decisions, and introducing best practices in crop management.
SER leads the “Pilot One – Vineyards” and provides its integration software platform to offer a single point of access to all relevant information about the vineyard to facilitate decision making with data coming from drones, robots and other sources. In addition, SER collaborates in other tasks related to business and platform requirements, design of the architecture, deployment and implementation of geospatial enablers and services, AI services, among others.
LUKE (LUKE)
- Finland
Natural Resources Institute Finland is Finland’s second largest governmental research institute, performing non-profit research and providing expert services, in order to advance the bioeconomy and the sustainable use of natural resources. Its research is divided into four multidisciplinary research programmes which aim to create new bio-based products and business opportunities, increase productivity by digitalization, support regional vitality by circular economy, create well-being from immaterial values, and support the profitability of healthy food production.
LUKE acts as main facilitator for the pilot tests integrating robotics for the agriculture within Pilot 2. In addition, it leads the Advisory Board Coordination Task while participating to the platform architecture design and development.
BioSense Institute (Bio)
- Serbia
A research and development Institute for information technologies in biosystems, which cross-fertilizes two most promising sectors in Serbia: ICT and agriculture. They perform interdisciplinary research in the areas of sensor design, robotics, remote sensing, big data and biosystems, with a common goal to increase European food security and sustainability of agriculture. With over 30 H2020 projects, BioSense is the regional leader, and through ANTARES Teaming project it is on its way to becoming the European Centre of Excellence for IT in sustainable agriculture.
Within Pilot 3 - Blueberries, BioSense is responsible for providing the robotics platform and developing its additional functionalities, in order to successfully perform field operations. The Institute is also involved in activities that include data analytics and image processing, such as yield prediction, management zone delineation and weed detection. In this way, BioSense contributes to FlexiGroBots in every stage of robots’ involvement, from soil sampling and pre-sowing fertiliser application, through vegetation monitoring, all the way to the harvest and preparation for the next season.