By Janet Kanters
Wageningen University & Research and Tencent have launched the 3rd edition of the International Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge. Multidisciplinary teams from around the world will use artificial intelligence to remotely produce lettuce. The goal of the third challenge – to be held between June 2021 and June 2022 – will be a fully automated and controlled greenhouse without human interference. Wageningen University & Research (WUR) works, among other things, on autonomous greenhouses, climate control, crop modelling, the use of sensors, data, intelligence, computer vision and robotics. Tencent is the sixth largest publicly traded company worldwide. Its mission is to enhance the quality of human life through internet services. By organizing the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge, WUR and Tencent want to connect the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and food production, create more knowledge, make this knowledge publicly available and thus contribute to the
worldwide efforts of making food systems more sustainable. The first two editions of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge were organized in 2018 and 2019-20 at the WUR-facilities for Greenhouse Horticulture in Bleiswijk and centred around growing a cucumber crop and a cherry tomato crop. Both competitions showed that artificial intelligence can potentially outperform skilled growers in economically growing of crops, hence can potentially control indoor farming in the future. However, in former editions, all teams were still using humans in their decision-making. The goal of the third challenge will be a fully automated control without human interference. The first part of the third edition of the Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge starts this summer with an open Online Challenge, aimed at testing machine learning and computer vision skills of potential participants and raising broad interest in the AI community. The second part of the competition starts with a Hackathon, in which the five best teams will be selected during a 24-hour virtual greenhouse lettuce crop production contest at the end of autumn. The highlight will be the Greenhouse Challenge in which these five teams will compete in a real greenhouse lettuce production with fully automated control during the first half of 2022. The final goal of the challenge will be to produce a full six to eight weeks lettuce crop cycle with high quality, high resource efficiency and high revenue without human intervention during the growing period in greenhouses of WUR, the Netherlands, fully autonomously. Teams can show their AI skills during the Online Challenge, exercise in virtual lettuce growing during the Hackathon and in a real lettuce growing during a first crop cycle. The second real crop cycle determines the winner. The final winner will be the team with the highest net profit at the end. Potential participants can find more information on admission requirements and preregistration at www.autonomousgreenhouses.com. ●
Registration for the Online Challenge opened in April 2021. Registration for the Hackathon and Greenhouse Challenge will opened in July 2021.
Photo: WUR
An industrial computer vision company providing precision agriculture solutions to indoor growers, has raised USD$7 million in an oversubscribed Series A financing led by S2G Ventures and Ceres Partners. iUNU stated it is transforming the way indoor growers do business by harnessing the power of computer vision through its product offering, LUNA. The LUNA platform delivers a system of mobile and fixed cameras with high definition imaging and environmental sensors that measure and record everything down to the real-time growth rate of each plant. The software combines computer vision and machine learning technologies to continuously build detailed models of individual plants, unique among millions, throughout the day. LUNA detects even the most minute changes in health of individual plants, giving growers precise knowledge needed for proactive management. LUNA uses this insight to drive margin for growers through crop monitoring/forecasting, space utilization, and labour planning – while giving increased pricing leverage to the sales team. According to iUNU, greenhouse production is experiencing significant growth. In North America, the greenhouse fruit and vegetable market is growing more than 20 percent annually. As greenhouses expand their square footage to meet demand, however, labour shortages and rising labour costs pose challenges for growers. "Our communities are under-greenhoused,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO and founder of iUNU. “Rising consumer demand is accelerating the growth of the greenhouse industry, but the massive shortage of both growers and manual labour requires a scalable machine vision solution to further the supply." The LUNA system surpassed one billion square feet of greenhouse analysis in 2019. As a result, achieving and desired outcomes for customers has become both more precise and faster. The company maintains the LUNA system has the most extensive knowledge from imaging on the market. While each grower using the LUNA platform owns their own imagery, the constant growth of the volume of imaging drives the machine learning and value the system provides. ●
California, U.S.-based BioTherm, a provider of cultivation climate technologies, has established BioTherm LATAM in Brazil, a move expected to bolster the regions’ demand for efficient cultivation technologies in greenhouse and indoor growing environments. According to Jim Rearden, BioTherm president and CEO, the company has done many projects in South and Central America and has determined it was time for a strategic presence there. “We are thrilled to announce our LATAM expansion, beginning with the beautiful and diverse country of Brazil. It’s the next step as we continue to focus on strengthening our global presence and offer our cultivation climate technologies to growers around the world,” said Rearden. Plinio Bocchino and Sime Larrat have joined BioTherm and are heading up the LATAM market. They will be focused on spearheading the company’s growth in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile,and Central American markets by building strategic relationships with leading horticulture companies there. Founded in 1980, BioTherm’s offerings range from all kinds of heating and cooling systems to dissolved oxygen infusion for better irrigation, dehumidification systems and more, all of which optimize plant growth by enhancing the elements within the cultivation space. ●
