ABC - Adaptive, Biomimetic, Cost-effective collaborative robots for next-gen smart farming

The acronym ABC stands for **A**daptive, **B**iomimetic, **C**ost-effective collaborative robots for next-gen smart farming.

**ABC innovation** addresses interlinked challenges of mitigating critical labour shortage for low-skilled laborious, repetitive tasks in the farm (requiring high human dexterity/cognition) using cutting edge robotics/AI, increasing productivity with consistent speed/quality/crop monitoring/yield estimation, reduced recruitment risk/administrative overheads, innovation in growing methods (vertical farming) for sustainable land use.

Addressing these challenges, ABC aims to develop a cost-effective robotic fleet that are approximately 2 times faster (2sec/pick) compared to state of the art, a 10 fold reduction in unit robot cost (<£10K), a modular/configurable architecture that can be applied for other crops/applications with trials planned at other grower sites.

Hence, Importantly, ABC aims to address the crucial need for robotics technologies to be 'cost-effective and adaptive' to break the barriers of large-scale adoption by growers in UK/Worldwide.

ABC is a Grower led/Grower fed project, with the team having significant underpinning research/results in computer vision, dexterous manipulation, neural networks and deep learning, low cost/power embedded systems design, 3D printable actuator/tool design, collaborative robotics- already having impact on real world and Onsite Agri-food/industrial applications- hence making the approach and innovation envisaged by ABC achievable.