KDT-project AGRARSENSE, Smart, digitalized components and systems for data-based Agriculture and Forestry

“A robot may not injure a human being…” – written by science fiction author Isaac Asimov in 1942 – summarizes our partners ambition to assure human safety around their mobile and autonomous machines. This is a collaborative R&D project about intelligent sensor technologies needed for autonomous and remote operations of mobile machines in agriculture and forestry. The relevant types of sensors are radar, lidar, visible-light and thermal infrared cameras, needed for safe navigation and operations. Our company will develop a thermal infrared camera for human detection and monitoring. The sensors will be mounted on the machines and their data will be merged in an on-board computer for intelligent decision making. The main result from our company will be the thermal infrared camera for the purpose of demonstrations and evaluations. The camera will be based on microbolometer arrays with our proprietary integrated electronic circuits. The project will develop technology and the processes for fabrications of the sensor which will enable us to supply our partners and future customers with new products based on our thermal infrared image sensor technology.

Adequate food and its security are a global challenge, impacted by rapidly compounding effects of climate change, supply chains, human labour shortages, political and military aggression to name a few. We need transparent and improved productivity of agriculture and forestry and easy access to state-of-the-art technological innovation and automation, as well as a more sustainable use of fertilizers and irrigation. Through this Joint Undertaking, the AGRARSENSE consortium will take agricultural technology and productivity to the next level. The consortium covers the full value chain from sensors and components, packaging and hardware integration, software, algorithm, connectivity developments and system aspects, as well as testing, reliability, cyber security, and user safety elements. The project will be led by one of the world’s leaders in Forestry automation. Our company, IDEAS, will collaborate with partners in the use cases for machines in forestry (Autoforest) and agriculture (Agri robotics) where we will develop image sensor components (objectives 1 and 2) and supply a thermal infrared camera demonstrator (objective 3). The camera will be demonstrated for autonomous machines' operations.