News

 A new version of the simulator that replicates the real-world box exchange protocol and mechanism.

During this week ( May 27-31), CANOPIES teams will develop an integration week at PAL Robotics facilities in Barcelona, Spain, testing robotic table-grape pruning and harvesting. 

Good luck to all our colleagues!! 

CANOPIES partners participated in the field experimentation for table-grape pruning with great success!

Francesco Messina from AGRIMESSINA did two dissemination activities with two key supermarket retailers, Edeka and Sainsbury. The activities consisted of two meetings with technical managers to explainn Canopies Project, our targets and future developments. Edeka was in July 2023 and Sainsbury was in December 2023.

Our partner Dimos Dimarogonas from KTH disseminate CANOPIES project with a talk in the workshop New Frontiers in Networked Dynamical Systems: Assured Learning, Communication and Control, at the University of   Maryland College Park. October, 2023

Our partner, Emilio Gil, from UMA-UPC presents "Context and new challenges of the agri-food sector" including CANOPIES proposals in the Agrobank conference on October 26th, in Zaragoza, Spain. 

https://x.com/AgroBank_CABK/status/1717491258854162785?s=20 

Our partners UNIROMA3, UNIROMA1 and UNICLAM, set up an exhibition area at the Maker Faire event in Rome to advertise CANOPIES project. A large exhibition area aimed at reproducing a real table-grape vineyard and had three CANOPIES robots, one farming and two logistic ones.

Our partners Emilio Gil, from UMA-UPC participates in the Cambra Lleida Event in September 2023 with the presentation Challenges in the digitalization of 21st century agriculture.

https://www.cambralleida.org/wp-content/uploads/BIT-Expo-Area-5G_2023.pdf

Our partner PALEBLUE disseminated CANOPIES results in the Defence and Security Equipment International Conference & Expo in London, UK. September 2023

Participation in the IEEE RO-MAN 2023: "Speech Act Classification in collaborative Robotics" by Sara Kaszuba, Sandeep Reddy Sabbella, Francesco Leotta and Daniele Nardi from UNIROMA1, in Busan, Korea.

Our partner Emilio Gil from UMA-UPC participated in a working meeting for future collaborations with the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) of the University of Illinois where Canopies project was introduced 

https://digitalag.illinois.edu

PaleBlue Virtual Robotics & Autonomy Platform, has been recognized by the European Commission’s Innovation Radar. This platform is being developed as a part of the CANOPIES PROJECT EU-funded under program Horizon 2020. The platform has been named a significant EU innovation.

ICRA 2023 - 29 May - 2 June - London,UK 

Our partner PAL Robotics launch the newly developed robot TIAGo Pro Edition with SEA arms and latest generation premium software by using a human-centric approach.

TIAGo Pro Edition prototype started in CANOPIES Euroepan project.  https://pal-robotics.com/robots/tiago-pro-edition/

Congratulations!

CANOPIES partners organize a full-day workshop on "Representing and Manipulating Deformable Objects" at ICRA 2023, in London, United Kingdom. The workshop is organized by Martina Lippi (Roma Tre University), along with Alessandro Marino (UNICLAM), Michael C. Welle (KTH) and Danica Kragic (KTH). Further details can be found at the link: https://deformable-workshop.github.io/icra2023/  

Our partner PALEBLUE coordinated and participated in the VR and Robotics technologies workshop with Aker Solutions, in Stavanger, Norway. May 2023

Robotbrag is a local event organized by our partner DTI that attracts all the robotic industry and academia of Denmark. A live demo of CANOPIES robot in collaboration with PAL robotics will be performed there. 

Our partner D. Dimarogonas from KTH, disseminated CANOPIES project between the academic community with the talk Multi-robot task planning and control under spatiotemporal specifications, at the II Simposium organized by the UNED University and the CEA - Spanish Commitee of Automatica - . April 2023

22/03/2022

Prof. Alberto Sanfeliu-UPC, imparted a session introducing Canopies Project, in the seminar on "Precision Farming" within the master KET "Agro-bio-food Technologies" organized and coordinated by @umadeabupc

https://eeabb.upc.edu/ca/Futurs%20Estudiants/que-estudiar/master-ket-4-food-bio,

Our partner PALEBLUE coordinated and participated in the Eat Think Innovate workshop at Innovasjonspark in Stavanger, Norway. February 2023

Our partner Emilio Gil, professor at UPC, received the medal of honor at the LXVII Assembly of the association of former students of the agricultural school of La Cogullada. The canopies project was shown as a next future in the field of agriculture in table grape harvesting and prunning. More than 400 people attend the event on March 11th, 2023.

The canopies project has been present at The European Robotics Forum - ERF - 2023, with a booth from PAL Robotics and DTI and several talks at the agrifood workshop "Robotics and AI for transforming Agrifood by UNICLAM and UNIROMA3. Take a look at our photo gallery!

Our teams from UPC, PAL and UNICLAM developed a field experimentation during one week to test robotic prunning of table grape at Aprilia, Italy. For the pruning field tests of our collaborative #TIAGo robot. With data gathered by @la_UPC  and @uni_cassino in control, it was a great display of robotics in agrifood!

The first prototype of the dua-arm Canopies robot, manufactured by PAL Robotics and integrated with the sensorized mobile base at the LAI- #Robotics laboratory. The #robot will perform table grape harvesting and winter pruning operations in cooperation with humans farmers.

Our partners UNICLAM participated with several presentations of Canopies project at the UNICLAM Open Day 2023 and at the event STREETS-European researcher night 2023. 

Our partner D. Dimarogonas gave a talk about Multi-robot task planning and control under temporal logic specifications at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria informatica, automatica e gestionale. La Sapienza, Rome. December 2022

Canopies Project presentation by Felix Gorbatsevich from PALEBLUE at United Nations Metaverse Event. December 2022

Participation in the 5th Iberian Robotics Conference in Zaragoza, Spain with the presentaion" EU CANOPIES project" by Alberto Sanfeliu from UPC. 

Our partner PALEBLUE has participated in several events introducing Canopies project last research. 

Offshore Northern Seas Expo in Stavanger, Norway. September 2022

Offshore Technology Days expo in Bergen, Norway. October 2022

Spaceport Norway expo in Oslo, Norway. November 2022

Our partner AGRIMESSINA published a very interesting article in the agricultural sector magazine UVADETAVOLA.com

The link to the full article is here: https://www.uvadatavola.com/canopies-la-collaborazione-tra-uomo-e-robot/ 

The agROBOfood H2020 project organized a dissemination activity with 2RM du CNRS, INRAE, le CEA et le Labex IMobS3, on October 12th and 13th. Our partner Danielle Nardi from UNIROMA1 participated in it.  

Invited talk by Martina Lippi at the Workshop “Human-Multi-Robot Systems: Challenges for Real World Applications” (https://sites.google.com/view/hmrs-iros2022/) within the international conference IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Ro

Our partner Daniele Nardi from UNIROMA1 participated in ROBMOB 2022 with the presentation: AI-enabled detection and classification: report on three case studies - weed mapping in sugar beets, sunflower peronospora mapping and table grape quality estimation-. October 2022

AGRIMESSINA partner presented a speech at the Annual Plant Medicine Forum organized by Apulian Regional Association of Agronomist and Researchers in Agriculture (ARPTRA). Congratulations on the number of participants in the event!!!

During the weekend of October 7 to 9th, 2022, the CANOPIES partners - universities UNIROMA1, UNIROMA3, and UNICLAM with the collaboration of PALEBLUE - have organized a dissemination event at the Maker Faire (https://makerfairerome.eu/en/) in Rome.

Our partner AGRIMESSINA participated in the main international produce Fairs "Fruit Logistica" April 2022 in Berlin, Germany and "Fruit Attraction" October 2022 in Madrid, Spain. 

Organization of the workshops: Human-robot collaboration: needs, challenges and directions in different application domain. I-RIM Conference, Rome. October 7th, 2022. Organizers M. Lippi from UNIROMA3 and Alessandro Marino from UNICLAM

On September 22 and 23, the 1st Review Meeting of the Canopies project took place. A good part of our partners attended in person the meeting at UNIROMA3 University.  

Organization of the half-day hybrid workshop "Human-robot collaboration: needs, challenges and directions in different application domains" at the "Italian Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Machines" (https://i-rim.it/it/conferenza-i-rim-2022/) which was held in Rome on October 7, 2022. The workshop was organized by Martina Lippi (UNIROMA3) and Alessandro Marino (UNICLAM). CANOPIES project was presented by the organizers as an illustrative example of human -robot collaboration.

European Researchers' Night at Roma Tre University. September 30th, 2022. Presentation by Martina Lippi about the role of robotics in precision agriculture and the vision of CANOPIES project. 

October 2nd, 2022.

A new article in "Agronews Castilla y Leon" magazine about the development of robotic technology for table grape' harvesting and pruning. 

The full article could be seen here: https://www.agronewscastillayleon.com/desarrollan-robots-cooperativos-para-recolectar-uva-de-mesa

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya published a press article about CANOPIES project "Investigadors de l'@IRI_robotics i de la @umadeabupc treballen amb centres de recerca i empreses europees en desenvolupar robots que col·laborin en la recol·lecció i poda de les vinyes del raïm de taula".

The full article could be seen here: 

Our partner Dimos Dimarogonas from KTH participated in the WASP Industry Days 2022 that aims at promoting exchanges between academia and industry. September 20th – 22nd, 2022. 

Our partner,  Professor Dimos Dimarogonas from KTH  presented the key note " Multi-robot coordination under spatiotemporal constraints" at the industrial event "WASP Industry Days 2022 Sept. 20-22"

More information:https://industrydays.wasp-sweden.org/challenge-clinics/ 

Agri-food projects to introduce robotics into unstructured production environments    

Our partner PAL Robotics collaborates in projects such as Canopies in the Agri-Food sector. The goal of this project is to create a Human-Robot prototype in Agri-Food that addresses the challenges of Human-Robot Interaction and collaboration in an unstructured, highly-dynamic outdoor environment of vineyards for pruning tasks. 

During three days - July 18,19,20 - our teams are doing the first robot performance, checking and taking real data at the field of Aprilia, Italy. The integration and field validation will take place during the first week of September.  

July, 2022

The first prototype of the dual arm robot by PAL Robotics has been mounted on the mobile base at UNICLAM lab. Here it is!

 Alberto Sanfeliu, from UPC, introduced Canopies Project into the presentation: Intention, Prediction, Anticipation in Human Robot Interaction and Collaboration, at the "Robotics and AI Summer School 2022" organized by IRI-UPC.

Organization of the Workshop: “AI and robotics in agri-food: the present and the future”, coordinated by Gizem Bozdemir from PAL Robotics and with the participation of CANOPIES partners, Andrea Gasparri -UNIROMA3 - and Alberto Sanfeliu - IRI/UPC -. June 2022.

Our Partner, PAL Robotics participated in the 13th edition of the European Robotics Forum (ERF), as platinum sponsors, from 28-30 June in Rotterdam, Netherlands. 

CANOPIES project - a novel collaborative human-robot paradigm addressing the challenges of Human-Robot Interaction and Human-Robot Collaboration in crop farming (Agri-Food Area) - and Tiago ++ robot, were introduced to ERF participants.

International conference IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation. June 2022.

AUTOMATICA FAIR. Munich, Germany. June 2022.  Our partner PAL Robotics presented CANOPIES project at the PAL Robotics´s booth. Coordination: Jordi Pages from PAL Robotics.

Organization of the 2nd Workshop on Representing and Manipulating Deformable Objects. May 23, 2022. Organizers: Martina Lippi and Alessandro Marino from UNICLAM and Danica Kragic from KTH.

Organization of the Workshop: Prediction and Anticipation Reasoning in Human Robot Interaction. May 27, 2022. Organizers: Anais Garrell (UPC), Gerard Canal and Raquel Ros.

4th Workshop on Long-Term Human Motion Prediction. May 23, 2022. Presentation: Predicting Human Motion for Human-Robot Interaction & Collaboration. Alberto Sanfeliu from IRI-UPC.

Our partner DTI presented CANOPIES project in this two-day event that had 2700 participants from the robotic industry of Denmark as well as students from local universities and technical schools. Coordination: Tsampikos Kounalakis

Presentation LAVORARE INSIEME AD UN ROBOT at the Cassino’s municipality. 2° Appuntamento LE UNICITTÀ | CASSINO.  Alessandro Marino, Prof. Antonelli and Dr Di Lillo, organized a dissemination event about robotics for the general public at the headquarters of the municipality of Cassino. The event was held on 16.05.2022 and in this occasion Canopies project and the main challenges related to human-robot-interaction and robotics in Precision Agriculture were disseminated.

Organization of the workshop: Robotics, Agriculture & Food Industry in Food 4 Future, Bilbao, Spain. 17-19/05/2022. Partner PAL Robotics. Organization: Sarah Terreri 

Presentation by Martina Lippi at the RomeCup event at La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy about the role of Robotics in Precision agriculture and the objectives of CANOPIES project. May 3, 2022

Academic dissemination with a stand at the RomeCup event at La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy, presenting CANOPIES activities to high school students.  

Our coordinator Andrea Gasparri presented CANOPIES project at the event “From Vision to Action: Robotic Innovations in Agri-Food sector” organized by the DIH-agROBOfood.

Presentation by Andrea Gasparri at the University of Zaragoza, Spain (online talk) about the role of Robotics in Precision agriculture and the objectives of CANOPIES project. 

PhD life event at Roma 3 University. March 2022. Presentation by Andrea Gasparri about Precision agriculture and CANOPIES project.  

Thirty-fifth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS. December 2021. . Presentation: “DLO@Scale: A Large-scale Meta Dataset for Learning Non-rigid Object Pushing Dynamics”,  by one of the authors R. Gieselmann, A. Longhini, A. Reichlin, D. Kragic, F. T. Pokorny.

PAL Robotics is working with the TIAGo++ robot platform in this project to assist within a table grape vineyard on both harvesting and pruning.

Press Release: https://blog.pal-robotics.com/tiago-omni-the-launch-of-the-bi-manual-omnidirectional-robot/

Our partner Pal Robotics has participated with a booth at the fair Metal Madrid, 2021 - 17-18th November. Coordination: Sofia Battilana Pages 

Researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI) and the Agricultural Machinery Unity (UMA) of the UPC are working on the European project CANOPIES,whose aim is to explore a new paradigm of collaboration between people and robots in the context of precision agriculture for permanent crops. The focus is the operation of harvesting and pruning dessert grape vines. Press release: https://cit.upc.edu/en/portfolio-item/canopies/ 

Our partner Danish Technological Institute has participated at the Robotbrag fair introducing CANOPIES project. September 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zR6ACMSG8M 

European’s Researcher Night at Roma Tre University (20/09/2021) and at Università degli Studi della Tuscia (23/09/2021). Presentations by Martina Lippi.

Project CANOPIES involves developing a novel collaborative human-robot paradigm in the field of precision agriculture for permanent crops. Here, farmworkers work together with teams of robots to perform harvesting or pruning in table-grape vineyards. In the project prototype, TIAGo++’s upper body will be used together with an adapted robotic base, and with additional sensors in each robot arm. We will also adapt the end-effectors for this project, to be ready for harvesting and pruning tasks.

International conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual reality and Computer graphics.  September 2021. . Presentation: “A Preliminary Study on Virtual Reality Tools in Human-Robot Interaction” by one of the authors S. Kaszuba, F. Leotta, D.

30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN). August 2021. (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9515362). Presentation: “A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming Formulation for Human-Multi-Robot Task Allocation”, by one of the authors M. Lippi, A. Marino.

30th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN). August 2021. . Presentation: “Attention deep learning based model for predicting the 3D Human Body Pose using the Robot Human Handover Phases”, by one of the authors J. Laplaza, A. Pumarola, F. Moreno-Noguer and A.

IEEE 17th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. August 2021 . Presentation: “A ROS Package for Human-In-the-Loop Planning and Control under Linear Temporal Logic Tasks”, by one of the authors R. Baran, X. Tan, P. Varnai, P. Yu, S. Ahlberg, M. Guo, W. S. Cortez and Dimos V.

Organization of the workshop: "Developments in HRI to advance humanoid robots" in Humanoids 2021 – 19th of July, organized by Francesco Ferro, from PAL Robotics. 

Workshop organization: Control, Robotics, Sensing and Artificial Intelligence for Precision Agriculture.  29th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED). June, 2021. http://med2021.poliba.it/wordpress/.

29th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED). June 2021. (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9480187). Presentation:  A Control Barrier Function Approach to Human-multi-robot Safe Interaction”, by one of the authors M. Lippi, A.

Organization of the workshop: Food Four Future. 15-17th of June, 2021. Coordination: Sofia Battilana Pages from PAL Robotics 

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). May 2021. . Presentation: “A Data-Driven Approach for Contact Detection, Classification and Reaction in Physical Human-Robot Collaboration” by one of the authors M. Lippi, G. Gillini, A. Marino, F.

Participation of the workshop: Task-Informed Grasping: Agri-Food Manipulation (TIG-III) at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). May 2021. Presentation title: “Robotics and agriculture: from the labs to the fields”. Speaker: Alessandro Di Fava from PAL Robotics.

Organization of the Workshop: Emerging paradigms for robotic manipulation: from the lab to the productive world.  IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). May 2021. Organizers: Virginia Ruiz Garate, Maria Pozzi, Maximo Roa from PAL Robotics. Presentation title: "Robotics' manipulation: perspective and approach from industry".

Agri-food workshop hosted by PAL Robotics - The European Robotics Forum (ERF) 13-15 April 2021

Webinar "Human resources, digitization and robotization in horticulture in Almería" in Almería Smart Agri Hub, 7th of April 2021, organized by Alessandro Di Fava, PAL Robotics  

Here it is our "first of the four" mobile platforms that will be customized within the CANOPIES project. Briefly, this crawler will be adapted both for transportation of boxes of harvested grapes (logistics robots) and will be equipped with dual arm torso for the execution of agronomic tasks such as harvesting or pruning (farming robots). Stay tuned for the first release of the customization to be validated on the field!

The project coordinator, professor Andrea Gasparri from UNIROMA3, presents “Ambition, approach and impact of Canopies project” for the participants of the European Robotics Forum 2021 into the Workshop: New Horizon projects. 

Master course in Precision Agriculture organized by Università della Tuscia. February 19th, 2021: Lecture by Andrea Gasparri (half day) during the lecture dealt with ground robotic platforms for Precision Agriculture. http://www.unitus.it/it/dipartimento/dafne/master4/articolo/agricoltura-di-precisione

The Kickoff Meeting (KoM) of the European H2020 CANOPIES project (Grant agreement ID: 101016906) was held on the 11th and 12th of February 2021. The KoM was held remotely due to the active health and travel restrictions tied to the COVID-19 emergency.