Fab Lab Official Charter

AgriLab UniLaSalle Beauvais — A view of the main entrance of a fablab oriented to farmers and agriculture

22 October 2018 in Beauvais AgriLab opened its doors to the community. It is a fablab officially labelled and part of the worldwide network. In their own words:

AgriLab meets all the equipment requirements, but goes much further. AgriLab has large equipment for machining because AgriLab is also intended for the agricultural world, Equipment for SMT electronics and composite 3D printers exceed the limited scope of a Lab in urban area. AgriLab is surrounded by agricultural land and allows trying prototypes in real conditions & outside.

http://agrilab.unilasalle.fr/fabacademy/

The upcoming novelty is that AgriLab graduated as FabAcademy for 2020, thus being officially acknowledged as one of the nodes to learn rapid-prototyping by planning and executing a new project each week, resulting in a personal portfolio of technical accomplishments.

Fablabs oriented to agriculture

Fablabs are uppermost communities that are equipped to make (almost) anything. Nevertheless, some of their physical places can freely choose a thematic orientation. So I searched how many fablabs exist in agriculture. The reference is given by the current official list of Fab Labs that share the same principles, tools, and philosophy around the future of technology and its role in society: fablabs.io

The website proposes a search tab that is set to retrieve results only based on the name of the fablab. As such, I searched for the most common root: agr and farm. The results are the following.

agr — AgriLab Beauvais (FRA) 625 m². Farm of the Polytechnical Institute, ~200ha and ~80 dairy cows http://agrilab.unilasalle.fr/ Founded in October 2018 (official opening).

farm — FabFarm Düsseldorf (DEU) 50 m². Garden of 800 m² (within an area of ~15 000 m²) http://fabfarm.net/ Founded in 2014 (?).

farm — Algarve fabfarm Lagos ( PRT). Surface unknown. Secluded farmland and 9 rooms https://www.fabfarm.org/
https://www.facebook.com/algarvefabfarm/ Founded in January 2016.

Fablabs and the like in agriculture: beyond the name

Widening the search on the net, I founded a few more fablab (or the like) oriented to agriculture and farming.

Nerve Centre’s FabFarm

2016 — Londonderry, Northern Ireland, GBR LINK

FabFarm! A digital aquaponic farm that is designed, built and operated as a social enterprise by disabled students in Derry, N.Ireland. It is a partnership between the Nerve Centre’s FabLab and the Playtrail which sees students from the Playtrail and Ardnashee college designing, building and running their own digital Aquaponic farm. They were the recipient of a Digital Skills Award in 2017. Focus on aquaponics.

AgroEcoLab

2016–2021 (probably not an official FabLab?) — Abomey-Calavi, Bénin LINK

It is described as a third-place of experimentation, training and exchanges, open and free, in agroecology, for all the layers of the population.
The general objective is to research, experiment, disseminate and train on natural methods of agroecology in order to break with the use of chemical inputs in agriculture

Innovation fablab for agriculture

2019 (July) — San José Costa Rica LINK

It is the first Fab Lab specializing in management and technological innovation for the agriculture sector. Its purpose is to reduce the rural digital divide and increase the development of technological solutions in service to Costa Rican agriculture. Size: 225 m²

To learn more about AgriLab

AgriLab organised a first bootcamp for farmers in November 2017. We described what happened and how this approach could strengthen innovation by and for the farmers.

Dantan, J., Dubois, M., Fourati-Jamoussi, F., Jaber, M., Rizzo, D., 2019. Retour d’expérience d’un bootcamp dédié à l’innovation ouverte centrée sur les agriculteurs. Cahiers COSTECH 2 http://www.costech.utc.fr/CahiersCOSTECH/spip.php?article93

Dantan, J., Rizzo, D., Fourati, F., Dubois, M., Jaber, M., 2018. Farmer-oriented innovation: outcomes from a first bootcamp. Winner of the best paper prize at the 3rd Abbé Grégoire Innovation Days, Paris (FRA).

Originally published at http://agronoter.wordpress.com on November 10, 2019.

Overview on a few fablabs in agriculture was originally published in FutureAg on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

10–11 December 2019, Toulouse France

Live notes from the 4th International Forum of Agricultural Robotics. I’ll update this page along the two days.

Ethical and societal questions on agricultural robotics

The opening conference by Alexei Grinbaum, researcher at CEA-Saclay.

One key point: learning without understanding. That means having less words than collected and processed parameters.

Robots serving field crops

Agrointelli and John Deere debate with Olivier and Maurice, two farmers from the region.

Main point: make it simple, because farmers need information to decide more than data to analyze

Robots serving fruits and vegetables.

Flexibility for adaptation is the key point in the interaction between farmers and engineers. The second FIRA round parallel table includes Dino from Naïo (lettuces weeding), SYHA (tomato harvesting) and Hortifruit (blueberries spraying and harvesting).

José Miguel Arizabalo Barra, corporate CIO Horticulture S.A. (Chile), stresses the need that robots have to be a service. This implies lifelong support from the manufacturers, even if they are far away from the farmers that use robots. Continuous adaptation to each specific farm is crucial for the reliability of this new equipment.

In the view of Jean Inderchit, DINO product manager Naïo Technologies (France), the value creation and value chain structure are still unclear because the available robots are still under development. Early adopters are still looking for different models to find the most suited to their particular operating system.

However, the uncertainty in the value chain creation harness investments because of the difficulties in calculating the ROI. In particular, it is critical to define how to improve collaboration to scale business cases and cost and gain evaluation.

How robotics change job and support agriculture?

Robotics for breeding

One out of two breeders that will take up a dairy farm will buy a milking robot. This choice is even considered the only way to achieve economic viability.

Feedback from a dairy farmer and a support agent highlight relevant points. The automation facilitates the farm take up, especially the family by easing the job charge in the transition phase, namely for the ageing parents.

Automation is part of the deep farm restructuring process, both on animal breeding and management and on production quality. In perspective, this impact also the feed cropping system.

Robot setting offers huge opportunities, yet too many parameters can be defined. So extension and support services are required to personalise factory settings. This step is crucial for the good success of robot exploitation.

Once the settings have been suited to the specific farm and farmer’s needs, support services need to frame the good management. As an example, a water temperature sensor could be harnessed by limestone water. External monitoring could help so to address practical issues.

Finally, farmers can be supported in exploiting data collected. In this sense, good maintenance increase robot operating lifetime, so data collection.

In the end, the milking robot allows for greater flexibility in livestock management. Though, is crucial to respect the ROI and financial integration of the robot costs. As so? the support service should check if the farmer is robot-ready and capable to deal with different management.

Altogether 80% of dairy farmers are satisfied with his/her farm if having a robot, against the 65% without a robot (according to a local survey).

Robotics for vegetables

Matrhoeu Follet, an early adopter of the Naïo weeding robot witness of his experience. Of notice, the buying of the robot was supported within the conversion to organic farming by a partnership with consumers and final users.

In this vein, the robot was particularly appreciated because of the lighter weight (thanks to electrification) that reduces soil compaction even in the case of multiple tillage operations.

Marhilde Ceaux, from Naïo Technologies, os on charge of the after sale services. The robot adoption includes three parties: the manufacturer, the robot and the farmer. First of all, the farm is checked against the hard technical robot constraints. Both the farm and the farmers have to be robot-ready because some adaptation could be required to take into account the robot technical evolution. In this vein, the personalized support for the farmer is a win-win situation also for the manufacturer, who can learn from the field operationalization and so improve the machine for multiple use cases.

The first advantage of robot adoption is greater comfort, even though a collaboration between the farmer and the robot is needed, for instance for in-row weeding.

On the one hand, replacing a fuel (old smoking) tractor with a silent electric robot allows for a quieter and more pleasant work-frame. On the other hand, the robot requires much more anticipation and foreseeing: it is a preventive tool rather than a curative one.

Education and training are even more needed in horticulture because they have to manage tens of different crops and varieties, on top of which adding robot management skills. In perspective, the farmer hopes that the better working conditions will facilitate the back to the farming of new operators and farmers.

A cliché from the round table about job and support service changes in agriculture in the transition to robotics (photo: D. Rizzo, FIRA 10 Dec. 2019, Toulouse)

In summary, the transition towards robotics is a multi-actor adventure.

Does robotisation contribute to the quality of life at work?

Aline Dronne (sociologist, Aract Grand Est) proposes a focus from a sociological perspective, especially on dairy farming.

Robotisation is a heavy investment. As so, it requires motivation. In addition, it implies a deep change in the job, even though not completely. Surveys showed that the breeders consider that their job is not changed, but even improved. Some of them affirm that the robot allowed for a better knowledge of the herd as a whole and of each animal. Nevertheless, the farmer should be ready to manage data to really exploit this opportunity.

The milking robot could potentially enable a better balance between personal and professional aspects of life.

New technologies risk nevertheless to deprive farmers of the equipment mastery. On top of that, there is the risk of isolation because the community built on traditional tools and knowledge is destructured by the new machines that are for few people.

In conclusion, a hidden risk of robots and new technologies is the constant connection and a never-ending mental load.

The perspective of health services

Simulating driving conditions, reducing load movement as well as the contact between operators and phytochemical are some examples of risk prevention.

New technologies are therefore a possible mean to prevent and reduce risks. In this vein, virtual reality could be used to increase risk awareness.

Insurance: should we ensure agricultural robots?

First, we should define what is a robot, then looking at what is the regulation.

Mobile robots moving on the road are submitted to road regulation. However, even immobile robots as milking robots could be ensured because of their value.

In general, robots are quite secure because of their multiple sensors.

Robots can be insured at multiple levels: environment (people moving around), the operator and the robot itself.

In perspective, some issues can be raised about agricultural robotics insurance: cybersecurity, steal, changes and uncertainties in regulation, social acceptability and risks of vandalism.

Insurer perspective on agricultural robots (photo: D. Rizzo, FIRA 10 Dec. 2019, Toulouse).

Groupama insured tractors from the beginning, and around 1900. Now they have started to insure both mobile and stable robots, even though for different reasons. They have considered mobile robot insurance to answer Naïo solicitations on this topic.

In perspective, in my perspective, insurance operators should also address the whole digital environment composed of various connected devices and telemetrics.

By the way, agricultural robots for what?

Research and development and uphill actors in the development chain can play a role in scaling up agricultural robots.

Anne Paulhe-Massol, Innovation director at Arterris (France), is considering the provision of robot as a service for neighbouring farmers. The service approach could represent a relevant alternative against the buying of this equipment, especially for small farms, and to overcome affordability issues. In this vein, intermediate actors could act as contractors by buying robots for leasing.

Downhill stakeholders in the agrifood chain should be more involved in agricultural robot development. The goal is to allow them transcribing the quality expectation and the environmental labelling.

Pablo Quijida, R&D portfolio manager at Bayer, opens on the development of varieties more suited for robotics, for instance of tomato varieties more easy to automatic harvesting.

Roland Lenain introduces the workshop by addressing the main scientific locks and wider expectations.

Societal questions identified by Roland Lenain for the RobAgri association (photo: D.Rizzo, 11 Dec. 2019, Toulouse)

Many robots are already around, yet some scientific locks and societal expectations to be addressed. In this context, 70 actors of the French and European sector of agricultural robotics joined to create the RobAgri association. This association is providing a networking framework to boost the development of new tools for agriculture.

Robotic vision applied to weed control

Feras Dayoub from Robotic Vision proposed a very wide and relevant overview of the application of machine learning for computer vision.

20191211_104944.mp4

Classical accuracy measures to train models have to be reviewed based on the sensor performances and the operational conditions. In addition, the environment of deployment in real life is changing on the go. Altogether this can result in model fragility, which is a failure in its labelling performances.

Originally published at http://agronoter.wordpress.com on December 10, 2019.

FIRA19 Live notes was originally published in FutureAg on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here we go! The 5th Edition of the International Forum of #AgriculturalRobotics has gone live this morning. Three days to learn, exchange and see demos about future-ready agricultural equipment.

FIRA 2020 Forum International de la Robotique Agricole 8 > 10 DEC 2020

Last year I decided to share my live notes, and it was a nice way to focus on the main ideas and outcomes of the multiple exchanges

https://agronoter.wordpress.com/2019/12/10/fira19-live-notes/

Due to the pandemic, the 2020 FIRA edition is completely virtual and it will be even much easier to share key points from convenors and exhibitors.

Main stage

The French Ministry of Agriculture addressed his speech to the International Forum participants. France is proving to be at the forefront of innovation for agricultural robotics, thanks to FIRA and RobAgri association.

Davide Rizzo on Twitter: "#FIRA2020 The French Ministry of Agriculture @J_Denormandie addressed his speech to the International Forum participants. France is proving to be at the forefront of innovation for #agriculturalrobotics thanks to @FIRA_team and @RobagriOMore contents here https://t.co/Ozb7xYW8dq pic.twitter.com/sb3lls0eab / Twitter"

FIRA2020 The French Ministry of Agriculture @J_Denormandie addressed his speech to the International Forum participants. France is proving to be at the forefront of innovation for #agriculturalrobotics thanks to @FIRA_team and @RobagriOMore contents here https://t.co/Ozb7xYW8dq pic.twitter.com/sb3lls0eab

In the introductory plenary, Josef Kienzle from FAO highlighted a hub of dedicated resources about sustainable agricultural mechanization. Among them, the highly relevant and recent report titled Agriculture 4.0 — Agricultural robotics and automated equipment for sustainable crop production

détails | FAO | Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture

Adopters feedback

Labour shortage is just one side of the reasons justifying agricultural robots uptake. The flip-side is training and monitoring skills needed. This is what is being pointed out by Chuck BARESICH (Haggerty Creek Ltd.) and Joaquín REYES GONZÁLEZ (Wine Fields of Ribera del Duero) during the plenary session about vineyards. They share their feedbacks as early adopters of RoamIO (by Korachi) and other agricultural robotic solutions. They point out that the main advantage and counterparts are the wide room for customization to their specific needs and the possibility to build reciprocal trust.

Robot loving vs robot bashing round table

Robots replace tasks, especially repetitive tasks, not work. The first advantage is to free farmers’ time for agronomy and spare time for their family. Indeed, robots can help to overcome the lack of trained human power during critical agricultural periods. Even better, robots enable the farming operation to be scheduled ahead, eventually freeing farmers also from uncertainty and mental load (Green).

The environmental impact of new technologies, namely related to the use of rare earth elements, must be correctly framed. Is this impact to be compared with past technologies or with similar contemporary or upcoming ones? The real issue is not in the use of these raw materials, which is being reduced compared to classical agricultural machinery; instead, the challenge is to find processes to allow their reuse.

Cooperatives and contractors may be a good alternative for small farmers to support their access to robots and most advanced agricultural technologies (Azevedo). In addition, robots help to have technical demanding tasks accomplished at the right time, especially during harvest periods where labour shortage is most affecting farming.

Roughly 2–3 Terabytes are produced per day per field by agricultural robots. This data deluge may help to prove to the consumer the sustainability of farming practices. Farmers are _the_ data owners. Yet, decision support systems and artificial intelligence are needed to ease the decision-making. In this perspective, two consortia are promoting the coordination among actors in the French agricultural and food sectors.

Numagri - Numagri

Once the agricultural robots will start to deliver the expected performances, the farmers /who are curious/ will surely learn how to master them (Azevedo). Training & usability are though a clear competitive parameter for robotic manufacturers: decluttering from irrelevant tech options will be crucial (Green). Freeing farmers and agronomists from homogeneous and repetitive tasks will ensure they can focus on the interpretation of variability /what humans are best at/. So, it will be better for farmers to stick to agronomy instead of learning robotics (Green). Though, the priority in learning and acquiring electronics, robotics and similar skills will depend upon each farmer’s individual business model (Azevedo).

RobAgri Scientific Workshop

Very relevant introduction by Christian Huygue (INRAE). He highlighted the opportunity from agricultural robotics to enable agroecology transition on several aspects. First, the data augmented farming possible achieving preventive plant protection, thanks to the continuous multiple data collection, which already proved to be more effective than human capabilities to spot plant diseases and pests. Second, the possibility to manage highly spatial and temporal precision in farming practices. Third, enabling diversification of farming practices and cropping systems thanks to the modularity of implement size.

Agricultural robotics is mainly driven by the labour shortage, due to the steady reduction of the economically active population in agriculture. Nonetheless, robotics might also contribute to enhancing the attractiveness of the agricultural sector, otherwise and generally perceived as not attractive and based on painful and repetitive actions.

What might be the key topic in the training of the operators to ease the uptake and mastery of agricultural robots (or autonomous equipment)?

Operators must be trained to support and enable the co-design of robotic solutions from the very beginning. As so, they have to have skills beyond mechanics, namely in agronomy, biology as well as in sociology to properly handle societal expectations.

Farming with no tractor driver, is it possible?

Law and regulations are under analysis in the Wednesday session. Andrea Bertolini (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) provided a summary of legislation regulating autonomous solutions. The liability for damages is currently on the operator and, in a second stage, to the machine provider. Altogether the legislation always covers new technologies. The question is rather how related damaged should be regulated.

Insurances need a market and a defined perimeter of risk. For the moment there are not enough data for both of them. A study from 2016 in the US found that we were not yet able to affirm that automatic vehicle will be more sure than the current vehicle. For instance, hacking may add insecurity. The solution would be to identify a single source for uncertainty, such as the user as the only source of litigation. This might allow shifting cost from ex-post litigation to ex-ante payment of insurance. Nonetheless, we are still far away from one fitt-all solution.

Christophe Gossard (John Deere) addressed the ongoing proposal for relying on architecture are under development to use data to provide proof of reliability and compliance to more or less precise or clear. The revision of the machinery directive has problems following the fast pace of technology innovations. Presumption of conformity, technical files produced, and similar approaches might help to deal with the lack of precise legislation.

Demos and pitches

News from Australia about field crop robotics with SwarmFarm. In the Q&A session, Andrew Bate is clarifying that training is increasingly addressed through support materials for operators and field demos directly with farmers.

Wandering across the booths, I’m picking and updating a list of well-known recently launched agricultural robots. An early list is available in this Twitter thread https://twitter.com/pievarino/status/1336258025083052034

Save the dates

Wandering across the booths I’ve learned about the agROBOfood Industrial Challenges OpenCall Webinar for SMEs “FIRA Edition” 🗓️Thursday, Dec 10, 2020 | 11:00 AM — 12:30 PM. This is the DIRECT LINK

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.

FIRA2020 — lively updated notes was originally published in FutureAg on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#FutureReady The 10 disruptive #TechTrends expected for the upcoming year(s). All of them apply also to #FutureAg. Starting from a paper by Priya Dialani on Analytical Insight, I share my agriculture-related thoughts.

• 5G mainstreaming. Relevant if the connection will be guaranteed also in rural areas
• Ethical AI — The algorithmization of farming practices is extracting and formalizing entrepreneurial knowledge from farmers: who will take the added valuer?
• Integration of AR Glasses — Already used in the agmachinery industry either for enhancing manufacturing (like AGCO) or maintenance (like Kuhn)
• Reevaluation of automation roadmap — #AgriculturalRobotics is steadily booming (Just have a look at the next FIRA — International Forum of Agricultural Robotics)
• Customer data platforms (CDP) — The number of actors and solutions trying to harmonize and integrate the multiple agricultural data sources is constantly growing, calling for the definition of new interoperability standards
• Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) — Telemetry is highlighting two added values for agriculture: the improvement of machinery use and the enhancement of machine and implement design
• Cloud-native technologies — The IoT is being specifically developed as #InternetOfFarming across the supply chain.
• Cybersecurity mesh — Probably the biggest underestimated issue in agricultural digitalization
• Hyperlocal business operations — The shortening of the supply chain, partly enabled by digitalization, is expected to create new added value for agricultural productions
• Quantum Computing — As far as it will improve the climate change modelling it will directly impact the design of future farming

The 10 Disruptive Tech Trends of 2021

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.

What are the 10 disruptive Tech Trends for 2021? A focus on future farming was originally published in FutureAg on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.