Tekniker strengthens its presence in the agrifood sector

The agrifood sector is one of the main drivers of the world’s economy and highly advanced technological tools are required to increase production levels even further. The need to advanced towards smarter value chain and business management actions in the agricultural and food sectors has led to the creation of a strategic alliance to allow consumers and producers benefit from Tekniker’s technological expertise in this sector.

During the international Food 4 Future event, the Basque technology centre, a member of the Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), will present its most outstanding technological developments for the agrifood sector that form part of a collaborative action currently underway with AZTI (Foodtech 4.0), a Tekniker collaborator, Global Partner and organiser of the event clearly focused on end users and their needs; and Ibermática, another Global Partner and collaborator of Tekniker in the development of 4.0 technologies encompassing the entire value chain for different sectors including the agrifood business.

More specifically, Tekniker will showcase a number of in-house technologies currently being used to improve production in the agrifood sector such as advanced food sensoring, safety, traceability and data analytics, automated and robotised systems and the circular economy.

Tekniker will show its unequivocal commitment towards this sector at an event to be held on June 15, 16 and 17 at the Bilbao Exhibition Centre, in its capacity as a Supporting Partner and will give two lectures explaining the organisation’s knowledge in terms of robotics, artificial intelligence and digital platforms and how they can potentially be applied in the agrifood sector. The technology centre will also moderate a third presentation and present a demonstrator based on a robot that can improve agricultural production in greenhouses. Details will also be given in terms of the organisation’s commitment with regard to the Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) Expertise Center in collaboration with Ibermática.

Lectures, demonstrators and collaborations

On Tuesday June 15 at 11.00, the Tekniker researcher Ignacio Lázaro will deliver a lecture entitled “Open source technologies for value chain interoperability and value chain analysis”; to be followed at 15:30 by another expert, Ander Ansuategi, who will give a presentation entitled “Robotic and AI solutions for the agrifood sector”. Likewise, and simultaneously in another room the researcher Joseba Izagirre will chair the paper “Smart sensoring for the food chain”.

In addition to participating as an expert in technologies related to this sector, Tekniker will also be present on stand D417 of the AZTI technology centre, to display a demonstrator that can improve agricultural production in greenhouses thanks to AI.

This autonomous mobile robot is used for early-stage pest control and management in greenhouses to identify the problem and apply the most suitable chemical treatment according to strategies defined by experts. The system has been equipped with visual sensors and Deep Learning-based technology featuring data bases showing different insects in various stages of their life cycles.

Tekniker sources have stated that “thanks to these technologies the robot can decide which is the most suitable treatment and apply it to the affected area and minimise the use of pesticides”.

The collaborative action with Ibermática, moreover, via the Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) Expertise Center, will be present on stand D441 to showcase solutions based on IT cybersecurity for engineering and OT cybersecurity for plants and servitisation applied to the agrifood sector.

Collaborative actions between expert stakeholders such as AZTI, Ibermática and Tekniker are essential to make available integral solutions to the sector.

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