Innovations in crop intelligence: From the roots to crop yields
This session focuses on advanced automation in plant and pest monitoring. We will discuss Plantalyzer, a tomato monitoring robot for harvest forecasting, automated seedling root quality inspection in tissue culture, and automated pest species detection in greenhouses. These technologies enable scalable, efficient monitoring for improved crop management.
Speakers
Aneesh Chauhan is a senior computer vision and robotics scientist whose career bridges academia and industry. He earned an M.Sc. in Autonomous Systems from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, in 2004, and a Ph.D. in Informatics and Robotics from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, in 2014. After his doctorate he held post-doctoral positions on embodied robotics at Aveiro and in the Aerial Robotics Laboratory of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Since 2017 he has been a Senior Scientist at Wageningen Food and Biobased Research in the Netherlands, where he leads projects that deploy artificial intelligence to tackle labour shortages, enable autonomous agri-food production, and monitor biodiversity. His research blends computer vision, machine and deep learning, human–robot interaction, and natural language processing to create robots that perceive, reason, and collaborate. Current applications under his oversight include greenhouse scouting robots, AI-enabled quality inspection for food products, and vision and sound based large-scale ecological observation. His overarching goal is to advance sustainable, human-and-planet centric technology that secures resilient food systems for future generations everywhere.
Dr. Hsin-Cheng Chen serves as the R&D Department Manager at Taiwan HiPoint. He holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University and is currently a PhD candidate in Biomechatronics Engineering at National Taiwan University.
His research interests include servo control, image system integration, and biological system simulation. Dr. Chen has developed HiPoint's phenotype equipment and smart agriculture cloud system, and leads the phenotype system for Taiwan's National Plant Phenomics System construction team.
With expertise in automation system design and image analysis, Dr. Chen has led several innovative projects, including the development of the PDS intelligent pest identification system—recipient of the 2022 Taiwan Excellence Award. This system enhances Integrated Pest Management by significantly reducing pesticide usage through precise pest identification, preventing crop yield losses while minimizing environmental impact.
Dr. Chen's work focuses on advancing agricultural sustainability through technology integration, particularly through applications of the HiPoint PDS system in modern IPM practices.
Franck Golbach is a member of the ‘Vision + Robotics’ team at Wageningen Research (WR), specializing a.o. in the development of computer vision applications for sorting and grading. He utilizes sensors in both the visual and infrared spectrum and has extensive experience with 3D vision technology.
At WR, he is responsible for developing the Plantalyzer, an autonomous robot designed for use in tomato greenhouses. This innovative robot measures various quality aspects of tomatoes and provides accurate crop estimations (yield predictions). The Plantalyzer and its predictive models, now in their final development stage, have been evaluated for more than two years in multiple commercial greenhouses. This technology promises to revolutionize crop management by enhancing yield predictions and improving quality control.