BIOGRAPHY
Rocco Galati received his Master’s Degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2011 and his Research Doctorate in mechanical engineering from Università del Salento, Italy, in 2019. He is currently a researcher in Applied Mechanics at Politecnico di Bari, Italy. His research interests include mobile robotics for agricultural applications, tracked vehicles, autonomous navigation in rough environments and self-driving vehicles.
Giving Smell Sense To Agricultural Robots – The new STAR Consortium
Co-Author: Stefan Rilling, Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, Germany
It is well known that ICT Technologies (Information and Communication Technologies) are needed for precision agriculture. The goal is to ensure food safety, sustainability, reduce food loss and cost of food production, while protecting the environment. To achieve these goals, development of technology driven by application and economic considerations is required. Innovation costs money, and a consortium is one way to tackle the challenges.
The STAR project combines three partners with complementary capabilities:
An Israeli SME, TODOS Technologies, which has been developing innovative low-cost, small-form factor, low-power mobile sensors, which are based on CMOS-SOI-MEMS/NEMS technology-nowadays a mass production technology.
An academic group in Italy (POLIBA University), with unique expertise in developing autonomous robots for agriculture and testing them on the field with farmers.
An applied research group in Germany, FRA -Fraunhofer, which provides a bridge between the two worlds (industry and academy) by providing know-how in communication as well as artificial intelligence (AI), already demonstrated in the fields of farmers.
The framework of the consortium is through the integration onboard of an autonomous farmer robot that closely monitors crop plants including commercial vineyards in Italy and Israel, by applying TODOS sensors and the Fraunhofer communication network