"The Cobot Toutilo adapts to different sizes of vegetable crops, increases productivity for quality crops, and preserves the health and working comfort of farmers."
The ongoing working relationship with ToutiTerre, Inria and CHERISH continues to harvest incredible results.
In April 2018 CHERISH’s Jay Doyle met with Philippe Broun, the Technology and Innovation Manager at Inria, supported by the University’s Grenoble Seedcorn programme to develop a partnership and collaboration strategy.
Later in 2018, CHERISH funded a Swansea University delegation of researchers from the Computational Foundry, including Dr Xiuyi Fan and Dr Doon Macdonald, to travel to Inria to meet with counterpart research teams on the theme of autonomous vehicles. One of the outcomes of this was the ongoing partnership between Inria and ToutiTerre to consider semi autonomous systems in farm vehicles, specifically in the further development of the Toutilo co-bot.
Watch the film https://youtu.be/YA8cIvBCzp4 explaining how technology is used for the prototype vehicle. Innovative design concepts have been refined, including: voice recognition to allow the operator to work hands free; the machine is fitted with sensors to follow a line so does not need to pilot the vehicle; for safety while working, the machine has detectors for obstacles or hazards that might otherwise be missed by the operator whilst working. Above all, it is simple and intuitive to use.
A team from the Computational Foundry continues to work with Toutilo on the audio feedback project. Dr Xiuyi said “these tractors are targeted at small farms growing organic food, so this is AI for good, in action”. You can read more about Toutilo here https://www.toutilo.com/.
The landmark relationship was formalized in 2019, in a meeting with Isabelle Hurley from the French Embassy with a plan to host a, currently postponed, Tech for Good event in Paris to nurture similar cross channel partnerships, read more here https://bit.ly/3mlRZUx.
