The Danish Innovation Foundation has approved a grant for mobile robotics company Seasony. To date the Danish firm has been seeking to reduce labour costs on vertical farms with its autonomous mobile robot ‘Watney’ focused on transport and data collection. Now the company is also developing AI enabled early warning systems that utilise the robot’s image gathering capabilities.
The AI project has two key tracks:
- The first track focuses on identifying poor seed germination to conserve water, energy, and nutrients from producing faulty crop.
- The second track is dedicated to the early detection of diseases and pests, enabling growers to take pre-emptive measures before problems escalate.
Seasony estimates that data-driven strategies can amplify yields by up to 30% through reduced waste, efficiency gains, and higher crop output.
“This marks Seasony’s first significant foray into data analytics,” says CEO Christopher Thomasen. “While our primary focus remains on automating transport and data collection tasks, this new capability will deliver enhanced insights to our clients.”
The technology leverages images captured by Seasony’s mobile robot which scans the farm throughout the day.
These images not only feed into the computer vision algorithms but are also available to users in a straightforward gallery format.
As the project progresses, Seasony will collaborate with existing vertical farm partners and actively seek pilot farms for testing this transformative technology.
