Most of the current robotic systems are based on a traditional sense-plan-act cycle, where perception and action are viewed as individual processes. This approach, however, cannot deal with the challenges that the agro-food environment poses. As perception and action are tightly coupled through the interactions of the robot with the environment, the scientific challenge is…

Current robotic systems are pre-programmed to deal with very specific tasks on a limited set of objects very well-defined in terms of location, shape, size and material properties. To deal with variability and enable flexibility, robotic systems need to reason about the objects in their environment, or world. To that end, they need (to build)…

In mainstream robotics, task plans are almost exclusively imperative, that is, they consist of reci- pes of motion, sensing and decision-making actions to be realized by the robot. Those recipes are created at development time and are therefore inflexible and unable to deal with variations in objects and environments. The scientific challenge is develop declarative…

Current robotic gripping technology is able to handle well-defined, rigid objects. However, grippers for harvesting, food processing, and packaging have to perform their tasks under demanding requirements, such as robustness to variability in product size, shape, and softness, and fast operation to reduce cycle times. State-of-the-art robotic technology does not address these challenges. This large…

The greenhouse robotics use case will address the removal of leaves (deleafing) and ripe fruits (harvesting) from tomato plants, two important plant-maintenance operations. Using the capabilities developed in projects P1 to P4 this use-case addresses the challenge of how to deal with variations in the environment, such as changes in illumination and humidity, as well…

The food-processing use-case will address poultry processing and more specifically, the composi- tion of product packs with densely-packed products positioned in a stylised way, and the bi-manual removal or cutting of selected parts of chicken products. Using the capabilities developed in projects P1 to P4 this use-case addresses the challenge of how to deal with…

The food-packaging use-case addresses packaging of various food products like packs of cookies and bags of chips. The task is to pick these products from a bin and place them in a variety of containers. The robot(s) need to reorient the products, possibly using two arms, as the products are positioned in the bin in…