Gaining and sharing knowledge: Lessons learnt in agROBOfood

Building and supporting the community

Building a community of interconnected experts in agri-food robotics requires effort and persistence. All the energy that was invested by the agROBOfood team resulted in the most important achievement though: the growth of the eco-system. Βy attracting and fostering new Digital Innovation Hubs and Competence Centers in the network, collaborating within the broader ecosystem and engaging different stakeholders throughout the value chain, agROBOfood managed to grow during the last four and a half years.

Turning challenges to opportunities

Growth also resulted from a different path: the challenges that were faced during the same time. Dwelling on problems can become a hindrance; instead, agROBOfood used the challenges that came up during that time as opportunities to learn, improve and adjust any shortcomings.

Lessons learnt in a nutshell

01. Robotics is a complex and fragmented market with great disparities.

02. The market evidences an imbalance between robotics in western as opposed to eastern EU countries.

03. High wage countries are the early adopters of robotics.

04. The difference between socio-economically competitive and high-tech countries and low-tech areas, is a threatening digital divide.

05. The robotic adoption is driven by big farming companies, younger generations, and by climate change pressure.

06. The legislation is a strong bottleneck for the development of robotic technologies for agriculture.

07. In viticulture, organic and greenhouses sectors, the regulation for pesticide restriction is a real driver.

08. Given that the milking robots’ market is reaching maturity, it will have slower growth than other farming applications.

09. The focus on robotics, guided by earth observation, is an option for further consideration.

10. There is huge potential of improving the standardization landscape in agri-food robotics.

You can see a video on the lessons learnt in our YouTube channel.