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Since the early 21st century, the agricultural sector has faced significant challenges, such as the increasing demand for quality products and a lack of generational replacement. In this context, the agri-food sector is compelled to follow the example of other industries and prioritise digitalisation and automation to ensure sustainability and competitiveness.
In Catalonia, where 29% of the territory is dedicated to agriculture and 70% of managed water is used for irrigation, there is a pressing need to optimise water efficiency. Achieving this goal requires the integration of technology and knowledge to assess real water demands under environmental, energy, social, and economic sustainability criteria.
The introduction of lightweight mobile robots presents a promising solution—not only reducing emissions and energy consumption but also enabling more rigorous environmental impact assessments in a previously underexplored activity. In this context, the PREVENTBot project, led by the Center for Industrial Equipment Design (CDEI UPC) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), builds on the AgroMOBY project to further advance technical and digital transformation processes in agriculture.
The goal of PREVENTBot is to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomous systems for monitoring and measuring plant health and growth parameters in situ and in real time. The integrated system is proposed as a precision agriculture tool, aiming to save human resources, improve water and agricultural input management, and increase production efficiency. Its main objectives are:
- Demonstrating AgroMOBY’s capability to autonomously collect data in agricultural environments.
- Identifying plants and gathering data on water stress, health, and growth using combined thermal and NDVI sensors and cameras.
- Calibrating the obtained measurements through neural networks to provide water stress data for tomatoes and brassicas. Calibration will take place over one year at the Agròpolis UPC facilities in Viladecans to account for varying climatic and light conditions.
- Linking topographical navigation data with plant data to create a water stress, health, and growth map, enabling an overall crop assessment and identification of plants with anomalies.
The proposal is based on a UPC-developed technology, MOBY, validated in the indoor logistics market via the spin-off Steering Machines. PREVENTBot will use the AgroMOBY platform, an all-terrain variant of MOBY technology, incorporating hardware and software navigation systems (currently in the testing phase). The platform will integrate the mentioned sensors and data processing algorithms to monitor key crop parameters.
Budget and Funding
The project is funded through the call for Grants for Demonstration Activities in Knowledge Transfer under the Strategic Plan for the CAP 2023-2027, by the Department of Climate Action, Food, and Rural Agenda of the Generalitat de Catalunya. PREVENTBot has a total budget of €49,965.33 and a duration of 28 months (February 2024–June 2026).
Action under the PAC 2023-2027 Strategic Plan co-funded by:
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