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Quebec agri-food growers get funding to address labour challenges

The Canadian government has approved funds for projects Under the Enhancing Automation in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Farming Challenge.

Under the Enhancing Automation in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Farming Challenge, projects include:

• Exonetik Inc. – Developing a robotic arm to work alongside humans to harvest fruits and vegetables.
• Mycionics Inc. – Developing a robotic mushroom harvester, packer and harvester lift.
• Kinova Inc. – Developing a robotic arm to pick, harvest and de-leaf cucumbers and strawberries.

“At Exonetik, our team is developing solutions that will enable our partners, Savoura and Frontmatec, to automate tasks that until now could only be performed by humans,” said Pascal Larose, CEO and co-founder of Exonetik, which is based in Sherbrooke, Que.  “With the support of Innovative Solutions Canada, we will complete the development of the first marketable version of teleoperable haptic robot arms, capable of learning from human operators and automatically reproducing the same operations, with a sensitivity and adaptability unattainable by industrial or collaborative robots. Our mission is to make the impossible possible, and we believe that robotics can solve the labour shortage problems facing companies in the agri-food sector.”

“Kinova is delighted to have been selected to continue advancing robotics and automation in agriculture,” said Jonathan Lussier, director of industrial business development, Kinova, headquartered in Boisbriand, an off-island suburb of Montreal. “With the first phase completed and the results positive, we are confident of the benefits for the second phase.”