Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture, which is an environment-friendly and profitable technology of growing plants without soil, by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.

In the case of Hydroponics, quality assessment automation is often hampered by a large variety of products, and packaging often requires manual labor owing to varying retail packaging requirements that can change seasonally, thus creating a need for more flexible automation systems.

Many tasks in the Hydroponic crop production process cannot be fully automated and needs safe human-robot collaboration.

The goal of this project is to integrate commercially available sensors with a robotic gripper and additional protective equipment, designed for this new application and create, and even validate a safety validation protocol for selected scenarios by applying a mobile robot platform with a cobot arm in a vertically designed Hydroponic System.

In connection with this tender, a triple consortium of Green Drops Farm Ltd., SZTAKI, and Hepenix Ltd. was formed.

Project start date: 2021.01.01.

Project completion date: 2021.09.30.