AI & Robotics Algorithms

The greenhouses allow cultivation in soil and soilless systems of most agricultural crops. These are cold greenhouses, with the possibility of occasional heating if necessary. There is also a possibility to use recycled CO2 for CO2 fertilisation.

This is a 45ha irrigated field suitable for growing any field crop of the Mediterranean environment. It also has a weather station.

Three greenhouses of steel and glass - 27m x 10m. The greenhouses are equipped with cultivation benches for hydroponic growth systems, fertigation units and sensors for monitoring environmental parameters. 

The experimental farm also has a weather station. Crops routinely cultivated for research purposes are wheat, forage crops, corn, tomato and vegetable crops in general. The main focus of the farm is on the assessment of crop water requirements through the integration of remote sensing and in-situ sensors for data collection and the development of smart irrigation systems. Advanced weed management through robotic systems is also a developing area of research.

Main equipment includes a multiparameter metre station that monitors different water quality parameters including pH, ORP, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature; an IRGA system for measuring leaf gas exchanges; a psychrometer and a pressure chamber for measuring the water potential on leaves; a leaf area metre and fluorometre that enables quick and precise measurement of chlorophyll fluorescence parameters; probes for ion detection in leaf sap.

As a trusted technology partner in the agri-food sector, it offers advanced capabilities across cloud environments as well as traditional architectures, integrating solutions for virtualisation, containers, and orchestration. This combination ensures enterprise-level scalability, security, and availability, enabling the deployment of innovative applications and access to advanced analytics and machine learning services.

Hispatec facility offers a wide range of technological infrastructure services tailored to the specific needs of each initiative: 

Test and validation of autonomous navigation and mapping solutions for UGVs, by quantification of the system performance metrics through comparison with millimeter accuracy ground truth data for an agricultural field with rough terrains.

The Danish Test Fields are located close to DTIs headquarter for the Center for Agriculture and Digitalisation. Additional test fields can be made available upon request and DTI can provide both homogeneous and heterogeneous fields of varying soil types, topography and other relevant conditions. DTI has a lot of experience selecting and acquiring the right fields for specific trials.

The GrainLab is located at DTI's headquarters at the Centre for Agriculture and Digitalisation. In the grain laboratory, seeds are handled and weighed for field trials, and grain and legumes are handled after harvest, where samples are cleaned and analysed for various parameters, like purity, broken kernels, TKW, protein and water content. Soil and plant material samples are handled for further analysis. The GrainLab is fully coordinated with the barcode system connected to the field trials, securing complete traceability and automated data transferal for the Nordic field trials database.

The facility includes a mechanical workshop, an extensive range of robot platforms and hardware (e.g., sensors) and a 200 m³ motion capture volume. A close collaboration with Università degli Studi di Milano allows AIRLab to test robot systems for agricultural applications in fields, orchards and greenhouses.