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104 In operation | Priva Kompano at GreenTech 2021 – the Kompano we have now,” Coen says. “A lot of the work was outsourced originally. We’d started by forming a consortium of partners, to combine our understanding of technology, and of growers, so the robotics team at Priva was maybe four people in early 2021. But collaborations make agile r&d challenging: you can’t easily or quickly reach a holistic view of what your robot or vehicle should look like when you have many people around a table from many different disciplines with different interests. “So in order to offer an operational platform – not just the Kompano but the surrounding infrastructure, including the software on the cloud and future effector arms that will be attachable in place of the de-leafer – we merged the horticultural robotics activities of Priva with those of Octinion in Belgium. “In the latter, we make all our own mechatronics, which are used in UV-C [germicidal short-wavelength ultraviolet] and strawberry-picking robots, and both Octinion and Priva have the same objective of creating an autonomous platform that growers can come to grips with smoothly and safely.” The joint robotics team created through this merger numbered 30 personnel at the time of writing, and is expected to reach 40 in due course, with new horticultural robots planned to be developed and released periodically. Delivery and programming As the horticultural market is large and diverse, Priva is currently operating through a pilot roll-out scheme, in which Kompanos are delivered to customers’ sites and Priva personnel are on-site to help unpack and assemble them. They also ensure that the customers fully understand the set-up and use of the UGV as well as the results to be gained over time (in terms of productivity with the robot versus a human, over hours, months and so on). “Once we’ve reached certain grower- specific key performance indicators, such as percentage of leaves removed over time, the pilot will be phased out in favour of a larger commercial roll-out of the Kompanos, which we anticipate from June this year onwards,” Coen says. Additional support in the pilot phase involves training end-users in the use of the Kompano Me app, which can be operated through a computer, tablet or smartphone to serve as the Kompano’s GCS. From here, tasks and routes can be programmed, progress can be monitored, and performance indicators tracked in real time. Checklists of electrical, mechanical, and software health parameters can also be run through before giving the robot its tasks for the day. “Kompano Me works through the MyPriva portal, which is a cloud-based platform running on Microsoft Azure that has been serving customers for some time now, as a way of managing smart greenhouse automation technologies for irrigation, climate control and other services,” Coen adds. “However, it’s now also a control and monitoring platform for the Kompanos. Users can remotely see operating stats, run hardware checks, receive notifications, generate reports of how February/March 2022 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Kompano moves on a rail between rows of crops but navigates autonomously on its own wheels between jobs Priva’s Kompano Me allows real-time monitoring of the UGV’s progress, health and performance metrics