AIRlab, the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics laboratory of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano, organised the second edition of ACRE (Agri-Food Competition for Robot Evaluation), the official competition dedicated to robots specifically designed for the weeding of field crops, which took place on May 29, 2023 in Cornaredo (MI), at the "Cascina Baciocca" experimental farm of the University of Milan. The Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of the University of Milan, FederUnacoma and Informatore Agrario also participated in the organisation of the competition.
ACRE is funded by the European Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 METRICS project, in which a team of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano coordinated by Prof. Matteo Matteucci is participating, with the primary aim of increasing the spread of robots and artificial intelligence techniques in agriculture. The event saw the participation of robots built both by start-ups connected in various ways to the academic sphere and which are developing advanced robotic solutions, and by companies already able to offer engineered products on the market. The competition involved companies operating in the world of robotics and agricultural mechanisation, as well as “smart” farmers and manufacturers of agricultural equipment.
This edition of ACRE was dedicated to operations related to weeding, given the environmental, social and economic benefits that robots, even in low-cost version, can bring by providing an alternative to the use of chemical products or at least a drastic reduction in their use, without involving any human operator. In fact, the robots competed in specific tests such as the recognition of weeds, the ability to move autonomously in the field, and finally in the actual weeding. In the competition, the performance of the robots was evaluated according to strict scientific criteria, predefined by the organisers, in order to measure the performance of all participants in an objective and repeatable manner.
The main aim of ACRE was to bring the world of the Italian agricultural machinery industry closer to that of expert researchers in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, in order to create solid partnerships that in the near future will make it possible to bridge the gap that now exists in terms of agricultural robotics between the European industry and that of the United States, and similarly between the Italian industry and that of various European countries such as Holland and France, where the first edition was held last year. Precisely in order to increase companies’ interest in the initiative, in addition to the crops already used in the previous French edition, i.e. beans and maize, this year beet was also considered.