2 minute read
Company Profile
from Ipoma 02
The Future Makers
Automated precision spraying, thinning, and harvesting: with their start-up Aigritec, Elia Bruni and Daniele Facchin want to revolutionize the apple industry using artificial intelligence and robotics.
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Company Profile ipoma
Company:
Aigritec GmbH
Industry:
Precision agriculture
Established in:
2019
Headquartered in:
Bolzano, South Tyrol
Founders:
Elia Bruni (41, r.), CEO and AI researcher; Daniele Facchin (41), CTO and electromechanical engineer
How we became what we are today: Hard work, curiosity, and a bit of luck! Elia is a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), with experience at the universities of Trento, Bolzano, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Osnabrück, as director of the Computer Vision Lab at German startup ExB, and as a visiting researcher at the Facebook AI Research Lab in Paris. Currently he is a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück. Daniele is an electromechanical engineer with extensive experience in the development of electric motors and in rapid prototyping. He is currently head of the R&D team for automation and control systems at TechnoAlpin, the world market leader in technical snowmaking. Our job in brief: We develop solutions for precision agriculture and harvest automation by combining advanced robotics components and artificial intelligence. Elia takes care of the business side of things and is our resident AI expert, and Daniele is the expert in robotics. Together we lead a team of five at the NOI Techpark in South Tyrol.
Why we do what we do: Because robotics – in conjunction with artificial intelligence – can unlock a future in which everyone can choose their job according to their passions.
What we’re proud of: Aigritec – it’s our baby! We are building an autonomous machine that will revolutionize fruit crop management with deep learning and robotics – and will make agriculture a more efficient, more precise, and more sustainable process. So we are developing the technologies of tomorrow.
Our next project: We are currently working on adapting our robot to other types of fruit and vegetables besides the apple. Once we have trained it, our computer vision model recognizes individual apples in real time. This system can now be transferred to other types of fruit and different environments.
In 30 years’ time the world will be... we have to be optimistic: thanks to AI and robotics, our world will be greener and more sustainable and people will be healthier and happier!
