The horticulture industry needs to automate to remain competitive. In a new Odense Robotics Tech Development project, PotBot, Danish Technological Institute and the University of Southern Denmark together with multiple companies, will explore how robots and automation can ease the transportation of the demanding green products.
Robots are integrated in new industries all the time, even in businesses you would not immediately link to robots, or where it might be challenging to automate a process for example in garden nurseries in the horticulture industry.
“Garden nurseries are challenging environments for robots, especially mobile robots. The nurseries can be hot, moist, and dirty, which really is a difficult mix for technology. However, to remain competitive the Danish horticulture industry needs to automate,” says Lars Dalgaard, Section Lead at Danish Technological Institute in Odense.
“A lot of the tasks surrounding the plants are quite difficult to automate, such as using robots to move the plants, but that only adds to the challenge and makes it more exciting,” adds Lars.
To explore how robots can automate the transport of plants in difficult environments, the Danish Technological Institute and the University of Southern Denmark have joined forces with seven technology and freight companies; Capra Robotics, GOTposition, Meili Robots, Seasony, Hydrovertic, Container Centralen and Uni-Troll.
A blossoming automation
The PotBot project makes a lot of sense for the two end user companies; logistics company Alex Andersen Ølund and the garden nursery Schroll Flowers Aps, who have decided to take part in the blossoming automation project.
”The work we do in the horticultural industry is done very manually and includes a lot of heavy lifting. We have tried to automate our workflows before, but with no success. It’s the combination of transportation, handling of plants and the environment, which makes it difficult for the robots to succeed,” says Carsten Schroll, CEO at Schroll Flowers, who is a market leader in the production of hortensia.
The logistics company Alex Andersen Ølund is specialised in transporting green goods (flowers, fruit and vegetables) and they are aware of this type of freight’s demands, which are quite a lot more when transported. They see a great potential in automating the packaging as well as the transportation of potted plants.
The PotBot project will explore new automation possibilities throughout 2022 and it is expected to finish in March of 2023. Knowledge about the PotBot project will be disseminated when the project is done.
Learn more about the project here or by contacting Lars Dalgaard, Section Lead at Danish Technological Institute in Odense, phone: 72203983, mail: ldd@teknologisk.dk.
Odense Robotics facilitates tech development projects each year
Odense Robotics is supported by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science. Each year the agency grants a sum of resources to initiate new tech development projects. The projects are framed by our knowledge partners and afterwards selected by the Odense Robotics grants board. All projects generate new knowledge to benefit the participating companies and all information is later made available and public for the rest of the ecosystem to enjoy as well.