ICAERUS – Innovation and Capacity building in Agricultural Environmental and Rural Uav Services
About the project:
A key vision of ICAERUS is to explore and evaluate the potential and impact of drones as multi-purpose vehicles in EU agriculture, forestry, and rural areas. Through the use of applications, ICAERUS aims to demonstrate and support safe, effective and efficient drone deployment, as well as identify the risks and benefits with their use.
Use Cases with large-scale multi-actor experiments and demonstration events to optimise will occur in 5 countries and span across the 5 most important sectoral and societal drone usage purposes:
- Crop monitoring – Spain
- Drone spraying – Greece
- Livestock monitoring – France
- Forestry and biodiversity monitoring – Lithuania
- Rural logistics – N. Macedonia
Role of AgriFood Lithuania DIH:
Forestry and biodiversity are taken up here by AgriFood Lithuania DIH (AFL). The aim of this UC is to demonstrate the potential of drones as a tool for monitoring forests and biodiversity.
In Lithuania, AgriFood Lithuania DIH is involved in forest monitoring UC by using state-of-the-art UAV and AI solutions. The aim of this UC is to develop and demonstrate solutions how to identify unhealthy forest areas through satellite imagery and the deployment of drones for targeted inspections; evaluate the ability of drones to identify wildfire risks, and identify and locate wild boars, where the collected data and solution can be used for the possible monitoring of wildlife animal infection migration, such as African swine fever, to help take preventive measures of spread to local populations.
The mission of AgriFood Lithuania DIH in ICAERUS is not just to be part of UC demonstration but also to help to build a European innovation ecosystem and develop business and governance models, for the effective and efficient dissemination and adoption of drone technologies to scale up, increase sustainability performance and competitiveness, as well as, maximize impact in agriculture, forestry, and rural areas.
Project website: https://icaerus.eu/
Project coordinator: Prof. Spyros Fountas, Agricultural University of Athens (AUA)
Project partners:
1 Agricultural University of Athens (AUA) GR
2 Wageningen University (WU) NL
3 The Open University (OU) UK
4 Foodscale Hub (FSH) GR
5 Ortelio Ltd (ORTL) UK
6 GeoSense IKE (GS) GR
7 Noumena Design Research Education SL (NMN) ES
8 Institut de l’Elevage (IDELE) FR
9 ART21 UAB (ART) LT
10 Ecological Interactions (EI) EE
11 Hellenic Crop Protection Association (HCPA) GR
12 AgriFood Lithuania DIH (AFL) LT
13 AgFutura Technologies (AGFT) NMK