IAAC Campus in Valldaura Self-Sufficient Labs hosted last week a working session for the Robotics for Microfarms (ROMI) EU project together with IAAC’s partner Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris to set the starting point and the development plan of this H2020 project.

The main goal of the project, which will be carried on at Valldaura Labs under the direction of Jonathan Minchin, is to develop an open and lightweight robotics platform for micro-farms. After a week of work and sharing, the team analysed and collected data to plan the next steps of the project and the next meetings.

Throughout the week, Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris team in collaboration with the IAAC | Fab Lab Barcelona experts and the support of Noumena, build and test the first Rover ROMI. The Rover (land robot) acquires detailed information on sample plants and will be coupled with drones that acquire detailed and global information of the crop development and the overall harvest. As a first objective, and proof of concept, the purpose of developing the Rover is to assist in the mechanical control of weeds.

The project is coordinated by the Fab City Reseach Lab at IAAC and brings together subjects such as plant modelling, adaptive learning, and high-performance computing. This research is funded by Horizon 2020 programme, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years. The EU research programme framework promises breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.