€ 1,9 Million for Farming Robots

Denmark is leading in farming robotics and has started a new project called ASETA. The main scientific long term objective of ASETA is fully automated surveying and targeted treatment of crops to substantially reduce the environmental impact of farming chemicals and fuel.

ASETA brings together roboticists, agricultural engineers, and biologists to develop a team of cooperating autonomous vehicles for surveying and targeted treatment of crops. Surveillance is based on small unmanned helicopters equipped with a range of sensors, including multispectral and thermal cameras. Data collected are transmitted to a ground station, which analyses the data and triggers aerial and ground-based vehicles to start close inspection and plant treatment in specified areas.

ASETA is a cooperation between Aalborg University (AAU), Life at Copenhagen University, Nordic Beet Research, and Green Support Services at Copenhagen University. In the project the focus is on sugar beets and perennial weeds. AAU is responsible for coordination and for the airborne vehicles, Life is responsible for image processing and ground vehicles, Nordic Beet Research for contact to manufacturers and consumers and for proper demonstration and testing conditions, while Green Supports Services provides properly maintained and cultivated test fields.

The project is funded by The Danish Council for Strategic Research as grant 09-067027 with a total of 14.3 mill DKK (€1,9M). It started in January 2010 and will end in December 2013. There are 6 faculty staff, 1 techical staff, 1 post doc, and 3 PhD students directly involved in the project. Also, 5 foreign guest researchers will participate.

There will be a public, live demonstration of the project concept in the summer or fall 2013 at Green Support Services in Taastrup, Denmark.

Robotics in Agriculture Research Program

The agricultural industry is behind other industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straight forward and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same everytime. The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting stage and robots are designed to replace human labour.


ICT-AGRI is the acronym for the project which has the full title “Coordination of European Research within ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and Related Environmental Issues”.

The overall goal of ICT-AGRI is to strengthen the European Research Area and develop a common European research agenda concerning ICT and robotics in agriculture. ICT-AGRI is funded by the European Commission's ERA-NET scheme under the 7th Framework Programme for Research.

ICT-AGRI has 18 partner organisations that finance or manage national or regional research programmes in Europe and associated countries. Many of the partner organisations will contribute funding for joint calls in the area of ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and related Environment Issues. The research projects will be funded using a real common pot or a virtual common pot instrument.

Some examples of earlier European agri-robot projects:

Researchers from the University of Warwick's horticultural arm, Warwick HRI, and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group, are working on a number of robotics and automation products that will vastly reduce the labour costs of farmers and growers. Those projects include a robotic mushroom picker, a robot grass cutter, Aeropick, an inflatable conveyor belt system to aid the agricultural and horticultural harvesting process that offers huge savings in labour costs and an significant increases in productivity.

In the Netherlands Wageningen University are researching in small machinery and robots for agriculture. A Field Robot Event tested the tiny machines’ ability to navigate and detect weeds.

In Denmark research groups have developed a plant nursing robot (Hortibot(2007)), a computer assisted slope mowing robot Casmobot, , a robotic fruit picker is under development.

The Danish Agrobotic Network has been launched 2009 as part of a program with the main objective to further expand the cooporation and development within the agro-robotic field.

If you have any information about ongoing agro-robotics projects please comment or send an email.