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Systemic Innovations Towards a Zero Food Waste Supply Chain

ZeroW has set the ambitious target of playing a key role in the transition of current food systems towards halving Food Loss & Waste (FLW) by 2030 and reaching near-zero FLW by 2050.

ZeroW provides significant impacts through the demonstration of innovations in nine real-life food chains, by employing a systemic innovation approach, to effectively address the multidimensional issue of FLW.

This involves:

1. Pre-identifying systemic innovations, that incorporate multiple interlinked dimensions (process, organisational, strategy, marketing, product, technological, governance, etc.), which are tested and demonstrated;
2. Steering the evolution of innovations towards higher levels of systemic readiness and impact, using a Living Lab co-creation and multi-actor collective learning approach;
3. Enhancing the Living Lab actors’ innovation advancement capability with shared resources facilitating new ways and means of cooperating and co-developing innovations;
4. Developing context-specific trajectories for the systemic innovations (from ideation to scaling-up and commercialisation) leading to the provision of currently missing end products and services that align with consumer attitudes, food actor needs and policy trends.

Moreover, ZeroW establishes a clear ‘FLW impact trajectory’, from demonstrator results (2025), scaled up to meet the F2F 2030 goals, and steered through a ‘just transition pathway’ towards a near-zero FLW in 2050.

The ZeroW project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036388.

Project website: zerow-project.eu

Project coordinator: Inlecom Commercial Pathways Company Limited by Guarantee (Ireland)

Project partners:

1. AgriFood Lithuania DIH (Lithuania)
2. Allmicroalgae Natural Products SA (Portugal)
3. Asociacion de Investigacion de Industrias Carnicas del Principado de Asturias (Spain)
4. Asociatia Clusterul Agro-Food-Ind Napoca (Romania)
5. Asociatia Transilvania IT (Romania)
6. Aves Nobles y Derivados, S.L. (Spain)
7. Biosense Institute – Research and Development Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems (Serbia)
8. Digiotouch OU (Estonia)
9. DIL Deutsches Institut Fur Lebensmitteltechnik EV (Germany)
10. Eigen Vermogen Van Het Instituut Voor Landbouw – En Visserijonderzoek (Belgium)
11. Eroski Scoop (Spain)
12. F6S Network Ireland Limited (Ireland)
13. FBCD AS (Denmark)
14. Fondazione Istituto Sui Trasporti e la Logistica (Italy)
15. Fundacion Corporacion Tecnologica de Andalucia (Spain)
16. Grupo La Caña, S.L. (Spain)
17. ICLEI European Secretariat GMBH (Germany)
18. Innovatiesteunpunt Voor Landbouw Enplatteland (Belgium)
19. Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece)
20. Instituto Andaluz de Investigaciony Formacion Agraria Pesquera Alimentaria y de la Produccion Ecologica (Spain)
21. Instituto Tecnologico De Aragon (Spain)
22. Instituto Tecnologico del Embalaje, Transporte y Logistica (Spain)
23. ITC – Inovacijsko Tehnoloski Grozd Murska Sobota (Slovenia)
24. Kmetijsko Gozdarska Zbornica Slovenije Kmetijsko Gozdarski Zavod Murska Sobota (Slovenia)
25. Konnecta Systems Limited (Ireland)
26. Lietuvos Maisto Eksportuotoju Asociacija (LitMEA) (Lithuania)
27. Lithuanian Vegetable Producers Association (Lithuania)
28. Multiscan Technologies SL (Spain)
29. Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek TNO (Netherlands)
30. Novamont SPA (Italy)
31. Openbare Vlaamse Afvalstoffenmaatschappij (Belgium)
32. Robin Food (Israel)
33. Safe Food Advocacy Europe (Belgium)
34. Sintef AS (Norway)
35. Sonae MC – Servicos Partilhados, SA (Portugal)
36. Stichting Katholieke Universiteit Brabant (Netherlands)
37. SVZ International BV (Netherlands)
38. Termoformas de Levante SL (Spain)
39. UAB ART21 (Lithuania)
40. Universidade do Minho (Portugal)
41. Univerza v Mariboru (Slovenia)
42. VLTN GCV (Belgium)
43. Voedselbank Limburg (Belgium)
44. Wageningen University (Netherlands)
45. Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland)

Robotics with and for Society – Boosting Widespread Adoption of Robotics in Europe

The aim of Robotics4EU is to ensure a more widespread adoption of (AI-based) robots in healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production. It will be reached through the implementation of the responsible robotics principles among the robotics community that results in societal acceptance of the robotics solutions in application areas. Robotics4EU will create and empower the EU-wide responsible robotics community representing robotics innovators from companies and academia in the fields of healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production as well as citizens/users and policy/decision makers by rising awareness about non-technological aspects of robotics (ethics, legal, socioeconomic, data, privacy, gender) by organising community building and co-creation events bringing together robotics community and citizens, advocating for the responsible robotics among all stakeholder groups, incl. policy makers, developing a responsible robotics maturity assessment model and bringing the project results to the standardization bodies.

Robotics4EU will implement the following set of activities: 1) assessing the needs and developing a responsible robotics maturity assessment model that is a practical tool for the robotics developers and helps them to strategically plan and the uptake of the legal, societal and ethical aspects of robotics; 2) empowering the robotics community by organising capacity building events in healthcare, agri-food, agile production and infrastructure; 3) assessing robotics ideas and applications provided by the industry with end-users (via online consultation and co-creation workshops); 4) reaching out to the policy makers by compiling a responsible robotics advocacy report, organising a high-level policy debate and transferring the results to the standardization bodies.

The Robotics4EU project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101017283.

Project website: www.robotics4eu.eu

Project coordinator: CIVITTA Eesti AS (Estonia)

Project partners:

1. AgriFood Lithuania DIH (Lithuania)
2. Fonden Teknologiradet (Denmark)
3. Globaz, S.A. (Portugal)
4. Laboratoire National de Metrologie et d’Essais (France)
5. Mittetulundusuhing Robotex (Estonia)
6. Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet NTNU (Norway)

Cognitive Robotic System for Digitalized and Networked (Automated) Insect Farms

By 2030 over 9 billion people, along with animals raised for food or kept as companions, will need to be fed, generating inconsistencies between the demand and supply of food resources and promoting food insecurity by rendering food as unavailable, unaffordable, unevenly distributed or unsafe to eat. Therefore, food security represents the big challenge of the 21st century and in that context one promising potential sustainable solution is insect farming. Edible insects are set to be approved in EU by late 2020 as novel food and insects also being a value food sources for farming animals; however research, innovation, farming protocols development and standardization, and a technology leap by robotizing and automatizing the mass rearing in insect farms is needed in order to concurrently scale the production and dramatically decrease the production costs.

CoRoSect addresses the dramatic need of coupling research on bionomics and life cycle of insects intended to be used as food and feed, with new robotic tools and protocols for mechanization and automation of insect farming, which is a critical point stressed by the Technical Expert Consultation on Assessing the Potential of Insects as Food and Feed in Assuring Food Security. CoRoSect forms a novel integrated cognitive robotic ecosystem where the repetitive but also cognitively and physically demanding tasks requiring increased manual effort or continuous human supervision during the insects’ life cycle, are replaced by automatic robotic-based procedures which will also draw upon research performed on understanding biological, technical and economic requirements of insect rearing and optimizing all involved processes. Focusing on real insect rearing problems, CoRoSect technologies will be evaluated through large-scale pilots in 5 insect farms placed in 5 European countries rearing three of the most commonly occurring species, thereby contributing essentially to a secure and sustainable food supply in Europe.

The CoRoSect project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016953.

Project website: corosect.eu

Project coordinator: Universiteit Maastricht (Netherlands)

Project partners:

1. AgriFood Lithuania DIH (Lithuania)
2. AGVR BV (Netherlands)
3. ATOS IT Solutions And Services Iberia SL (Spain)
4. Centro Internazionale Di Altistudi Agronomici Mediterranei (Italy)
5. Entocycle LTD (United Kingdom)
6. Entomotech SL (Spain)
7. Ethniko Kentro Erevnas Kai Technologikis Anaptyxis (Greece)
8. Field Lab Robotics BV (Netherlands)
9. Foodscale Hub Entrepreneurship Andinnovation Association (Serbia)
10. Fundacion Para Las Tecnologias Auxiliares De La Agricultura (Spain)
11. Hochschule EMDEN/LEER (Germany)
12. Invertapro AS (Norway)
13. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
14. Luonnonvarakeskus (Finland)
15. Nasekomo AD (Bulgaria)
16. Oulun Ammattikorkeakoulu OY – Oulu University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
17. Robotnik Automation SLL (Spain)
18. Societa Agricola Italian Cricket Farm SRL (Italy)

Flexible Robots for Intelligent Automation of Precision Agriculture Operations

Agricultural robotics solutions can integrate a variety of robots for a variety of monitoring and targeted intervention tasks, to increase farm productivity, efficiency and sustainability through support of automated precision farming operations. Despite the rising farmer investment in farm/agricultural robots, most deployable robotic systems are meant to automate only specific tasks. The wide variety of tasks that need to be fulfilled in a single precision agriculture operation or mission makes it extremely unprofitable to address its automation with task-specific robots. These challenges result in a lack of flexibility of current heterogeneous multi-robot systems that poses low returns on investment and high risks for farmers. In order to become cost-effective, heterogeneous multi-robot systems needs to become more flexible by employing more versatile (e.g. multi-task) robots which collaborate to accomplish complex missions; ensuring scalable human oversight and intervention through adaptive mission control mechanisms (e.g. without information overload /overwhelming effort from the farmer); allowing the farmer to profit from robotics operational data.

FlexiGroBots proposes a Platform for developing heterogeneous multi-robot systems and applications which allows for i) more versatility by using the same robots for different observation and intervention tasks, in different missions, throughout the crop life cycle, ii) more cooperation between heterogeneous (ground and aerial) robots to accomplish more complex missions; iii) more valuable data to generate accurate insights into the fields, crops and robotics operations by combining data from IoT sensors, satellites and data collected by the robots; iv) more autonomy for real-time adaptation of mission plans as well as robot behaviour at the crop level, given operational conditions and real-time insights; v) more precision to carry out specific tasks in a very localized way, gaining accuracy and lowering costs.

The FlexiGroBots project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101017111.

Project website: lexigrobots-h2020.eu

Project coordinator: ATOS IT Solutions and Services Iberia SL (Spain)

Project partners:

1. Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain)
2. AgriFood Lithuania DIH (Lithuania)
3. Agrosmart SIA (Latvia)
4. Biosense Institute – Research and Development Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems (Serbia)
5. Bodegas Terras Gauda SA (Spain)
6. Centre for European Policy Studies (Belgium)
7. International Data Spaces EV (Germany)
8. Luonnonvarakeskus (Finland)
9. Mtech Digital Solutions OY (Finland)
10. Probot OY (Finland)
11. Seresco SA (Spain)
12. Teknologian Tutkimuskeskus VTT OY (Finland)
13. UAB ART21 (Lithuania)
14. Wageningen University (Netherlands)
15. Zeleni Hit doo Beograd (Serbia)