Siemens has sponsored this post.
Organifarms is an agricultural startup that is working to redefine the landscape of sustainable farming. Hannah Brown is one of four co-founders of Organifarms. She participated in a hackathon in 2019 when working on her master's thesis. The academic theoretical work wasn’t satisfying to her, so she joined the climate change hackathon to get more involved. Organifarms was founded when she and a group of fellow entrepreneurs met at the event and began their mission to tackle climate challenges and labor shortages in agriculture.
“During the hackathon, one of my co-founders pitched the idea, which was on sustainable agriculture and tackling the problems of the future, one of which is the labor shortage,” Brown says. “I found this very intriguing. We started working on some solutions and quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted to develop a technical solution, an automation solution, for this issue.”
Harnessing the power of automation, they developed a cutting-edge harvesting robot that promises to revolutionize the fruit and vegetable industry, starting with their flagship product, BERRY, which harvests strawberries.
“This robot picks derived fruit, detects the quality, detects the degree of ripeness and collects the data on how many ripe fruits remain. It then harvests each strawberry at the stem and places it directly into the hopper,” she says.
BERRY, the Harvesting Robot
BERRY is a remarkable feat of engineering and automation. The robot is designed to enter closed-off greenhouses, navigate through rows of strawberry plants and detect ripe fruit with incredible accuracy. Equipped with sensors, the robot can assess the quality and degree of ripeness of each berry, while simultaneously collecting data on plant health and the number of ripe fruits remaining.
Using its advanced robotic arm, BERRY carefully harvests each strawberry without touching the fruit itself. The robot carefully places the harvested strawberries into storage containers in an integrated box system until the harvest is complete and they are transferred to cold storage.
Through this process, the system enables growers to overcome labor shortages and reduce production costs, ensuring a sustainable and competitive agricultural future.
While the addition of automation in the world of agriculture isn’t new, this system provides not only harvesting capabilities, but it can also create more productive and sustainable crops.
“Adding this type of automation can help the local production be stronger. We can also help increase the quality and the plannability through the data that we collect and through the way the robot harvests the fruit,” Brown explains.
While Organifarms might be working on automation, their system also has a value proposition in the world of analytics in the agricultural space. Most of us are familiar with using predictive maintenance with machines and leveraging digital twins to provide insight into how a machine or system will react to various workloads and circumstances. Organifarms is looking to do this with plants.
“Our software processes the data that the robot collects while harvesting. We can analyze the data to help the grower with predictions and forecasting. We can also do disease detection. It’s a kind of stress detection on the plants, which helps users intervene quickly and be able to save more plants, should an issue arise,” Brown says.
Since the BERRY robot is autonomous, the team at Organifarms is also working on adding a UV-C treatment, which can increase branching in some plant species. BERRY can do these treatments at night when it goes back through the row that has already been harvested.
With this combination of treatments, disease prevention and timely harvesting, growers are not only more efficient in collecting crops, but they can also save on fungicides and pesticides because of the use of UV-C.
Using Solid Edge and Joining Siemens’ Startup Program
Organifarms attributes part of its success to its collaboration with Siemens and the use of Solid Edge software. Solid Edge, a comprehensive mechanical design solution, has been instrumental in the development of the BERRY's critical components.
It’s possible to use some off-the-shelf components when building a robot, but sometimes industry-specific components are needed. Using Solid Edge, the team has designed and continues to iterate on the design of gripper housing, storage systems and other essential parts, ensuring seamless integration and optimal functionality.
“These are components that we cannot buy, so it was important for us to design them ourselves. Without them, the product wouldn't work,” Brown says.
Additionally, Solid Edge's sheet metal capabilities have proven valuable in the manufacturing process. The construction of the integrated storage for the strawberries was a necessary element for a successful robot. With the sheet metal capabilities in Solid Edge, Organifarms was able to properly integrate the robot’s design with the needed storage solution.
Having the ability to adapt and leverage a modular design, Organifarms is prepared to adjust their system to an expanding array of crops. “Through this modular hardware system, we can easily adapt to other infrastructures in the future. Really, the focus of what we do now is on the software development, because that really is the difficult part,” says Brown.
Through ISAP AG, a Siemens reseller and consultant, Organifarms joined the Siemens startup program and was recently presented with ISAP AG’s “Startup of the Year Award 2022” for developing BERRY.
Looking Ahead: The Road to a Digital Future
While Organifarms already employs simulations in Solid Edge to enhance the robot's performance and debug potential issues, Brown envisions a more sophisticated digital twin system in the future. This would allow for comprehensive simulations of the robot's movements and operations, aiding in better understanding, training and optimization. By collaborating with Siemens, Organifarms aims to explore advanced solutions within the Siemens portfolio, such as Simcenter, which could enable a full digital journey, empowering their customers with data-driven insights for improved farm management.
Organifarms, the brainchild of innovative entrepreneurs, is working to change the agricultural industry with BERRY. Using Solid Edge as a fundamental tool in its design process, the company has its eyes on addressing labor shortages and advancing sustainable farming practices. With a focus on continuous development and collaboration with Siemens, Organifarms seems to be on the way to shaping the future of agriculture, one harvest at a time. As it expands its presence in the market and embraces the possibilities of a digital journey, the company's impact on the world of farming is sure to grow.
Learn more about Solid Edge and the Startup Program at Siemens.