TRACTOR
The TRACTOR project is a digital technological solution for the agricultural sector. Its main goal is to optimize and improve current production and management solutions for blueberry plants within protected environments. To achieve this goal, TRACTOR will develop various applications based on the use of an autonomous and collaborative rover and AI solutions that can continuously monitor the plants and support the decision-making process of agricultural companies.
The project aims to demonstrate the following three use cases:
- Estimating the number of fruits and monitoring their maturation stage.
- Monitoring the plant vigour index.
- Supporting the operators during harvesting.
To enrich the data collected with position information and to enable autonomous navigation of the rover inside the protected environments, a precise localization system is necessary; however, the GNSS signal is highly disturbed by the metal structure in these environments. Therefore, TRACTOR will employ a localization system based on UWB technology, which can provide high accuracy and reliability in indoor environments. The integrated system will be tested and validated at the San Pietro orchard, reaching a TRL 7, and obtaining a solution as close to the market as possible.
OBJECTIVES
The TRACTOR project aims to develop an innovative technological solution to support precision agriculture in protected environments using autonomous and collaborative rovers. The research activity focuses on the fruit-growing sector, in particular, on blueberry cultivation in protected environments. Specifically, the needs of the end user are to be met in the following three use cases (UC):
- UC1: Fruit counting and ripening stage monitoring.
- UC2: Monitoring of plant vigour index.
- UC3: Support for operators during fruit harvesting.
Expected outcomes
The main expected results of the TRACTOR project are listed below:
- creation of a discretionary analysis module of the images collected by the rover and provision
– of the fruit count
–of vegetation development anomalies - field testing of the TRACTOR solution for monitoring blueberry plants and harvesting fruit, using an autonomous rover
- development of a graphical user interface (GUI) for precision farming operators in protected environments
–Total fruit counting
– Assessment of the fruit ripening stage of each individual plant
– Detection of potential stress situations in the plant - development of an intelligent rover trajectory planning system for safe and adaptive navigation between orchard rows to support farm operators by avoiding dynamic obstacles in a shared environment with humans
- Development of a robust localisation system for rovers tested first in the laboratory and then in the field that enables autonomous rover navigation within protected environments.
Project details
Project Title: agricolTuRA di preCisione in ambienti proTetti con rOver autonomi e collaboRativi
Acronym: TRACTOR
CUP: C19J24000330003
Overall Budget: € 439.320,80 (of which funded by the NODES programme: € 329.716,70)
MAVTech: € 127.433,70 (of which funded by the NODES programme: € 93.837,45)
Partners: Particle S.r.l., MAVTech srl, Società Agricola San Pietro S.s.
External consultant: Fondazione Links, Fondazione Agrion
Duration: 12.04.2024 – 11.07.2025
The Project TRACTOR has received funding from Cascade funding calls of NODES Program, Spoke 6, supported by the MUR – M4C2 1.5 of PNRR funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Grant agreement no. ECS00000036).