On September 20, Sinfiny signed a collaboration agreement with AINIA to begin a project, funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency, to develop an autonomous platform that measures the ripeness of agricultural products directly in the field, using innovative technologies in this sector, such as autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs), robotics, and optical sensors capable of measuring internal quality.
Sinfiny continues its evolution with the challenge of helping transform the industry toward the Smart Autonomous Factory, capable of connecting with the user to continuously redefine its product and offer the best value in terms of time and cost, achieving maximum flexibility in production processes, increasing operator safety, and reducing delivery times to customers.
Project funding by the Valencian Innovation Agency
The project will develop two ripeness measurement probes capable of adapting to the two selected application examples: tomatoes and beets. These probes will be adapted to automatic positioning systems that will be integrated into an AGV. Upon completion of the project, the AGV will be able to move around the field or greenhouse, locate the presence of the fruit, measure ripeness, and store or send the generated data for further processing.
The use of new Industry 4.0 technologies, such as AGVs and robotics, generates a wide range of opportunities for farmers to optimize their harvests, identify treatment improvements, and, of course, reduce costs to become more competitive.
The existence of an autonomous platform for measuring ripeness in agricultural products, capable of being programmed to automatically sample a field or greenhouse and quickly generate a ripeness map for each area from these measurements, would greatly simplify the ripeness sampling process, especially on large agricultural areas, as it would avoid having to travel through fields, collect fruit, and send it to internal or external laboratories. The entire process would significantly save field technicians’ time. Furthermore, with such a map available, each plot could be harvested at its optimal ripeness, depending on its intended use (immediate use, ripening in a cold storage facility, export, etc.), which would generally increase the quality of the crop reaching the market. Therefore, losses due to produce falling outside the ripeness specifications would also be greatly reduced, helping to optimize plot yields.
Through an R&D&I project, Sinfiny aims to participate in the agricultural sector by incorporating technologies such as robotics, computer vision, geolocation, big data, and artificial intelligence, implementing solutions to optimize agricultural processes, with the aim of achieving cost and time savings, ensuring harvests are carried out at the most optimal times.