Agreenculture brings safety, autonomy, and business intelligence to convert any machine or implement into a safe robot. The company supports machinists in meeting the challenges of autonomous outdoor machines in complete safety, through innovative technological modules. The objective is to facilitate the daily life of the end users through easy-to-use, cost-effective and environmentally friendly services. For the machinist Agreenculture permits them through “configure & connect” solutions to accelerate the time to market and the certification of the machines.
Interview with Hortense Serreau, Communication Officer at Agreenculture.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Hortense Serreau: Agreenculture offers technological modules to autonomize, make secure and smarter any autonomous machine in outdoor environments.
Agreenculture’s expertise lies in navigation, certified geofencing, obstacle detection, monitoring, remote operation and associated agronomic services.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
H.S: Agreenculture has certified and industrialized its AGCbox, the modules for positioning, guiding, connecting and securing. AGCbox uses GNSS RTK which allows an accuracy to the centimeter.
The advantage of Agreenculture is that they are the only ones to offer a certified virtual security contour: geofencing safe #Safencing. This safety feature is PLd grade according to ISO 13849. A key element that ensures that the autonomous machine will stay in its working area and not risk going on a road.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
H.S: Agreenculture offers a range of solutions for machinists and roboticists, through technological modules such as the AGCbox, embedded products and cloud platform for automation pmachine, Agreenculture offers all the functionalities to make machines autonomous, secure and intelligent through modules allowing precise navigation of machines, monitoring, remote operation, obstacle detection, Safencing and agro-intelligence services.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
H.S: We are living the 4th agricultural revolution which is digital. The market for autonomous vehicles is booming, the difficulties to find tractor operators, the high demand for more environmentally friendly products, decreasing number of farmers, all these causes are pushing machinists and roboticians towards innovation and autonomous solutions, more eco-friendly, more cost-effective.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
H.S: Today, the first machinery is commercialized, the leading companies are talking about prototyping phases and serial production in less than 2 years.
We help these actors to increase their time to market to meet the users’ needs.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
H.S: The market of autonomous machines is booming, there are a lot of very interesting innovations, machines dedicated to the vine, to the market gardening which really enable to liberate time to the farmers and allows them to reduce the use of phytosanitary products.
The development of our safencing, which allows the total autonomy of the machines, revolutionizes the work of mechanical weeding. It limits the use of phyto-sanitary products, but is very demanding. The added value of the man is not in the repetitive and hard tasks but in the tasks with added values.
Artificial intelligence opens up an incredible field of possibilities, the work on disease detection is in full development and is revolutionizing work methods and can allow real progress in terms of disease management on a farm. The complexity of the solutions developed means that a whole ecosystem is developing, which is particularly remarkable.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
H.S: Everything is moving very fast. The technologies are evolving so fast, the progress made thanks to passionate and motivated people to move the lines, to take care of the planet, to relieve the farmers and to produce a healthier food, make this year a year full of evolution.
This year Agreenculture certified its guidance modules, Safencing. We are working on virtual reference stations to allow the use of accurate and secure autonomous machines anywhere in the world, and we are moving forward to offer a solution for the remote control of machines. We are also working to offer agro-intelligent solutions to support farmers in their decision-making. An exciting year.
