Background
Hort Innovation is the grower-owned, not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australia's horticulture industry. Our role is to advance Australia’s $16 billion horticulture industry by investing in research and development, marketing and trade to build a prosperous and sustainable future for growers.
We partner with Australian and international co-investors including government, leading science, technology, and consumer strategy experts to anticipate future challenges and opportunities. Our role is to capture value from the investments we make to benefit all levy payers.
Challenge
We invite innovators, problem solvers, and innovative organizations to join us in addressing a pressing challenge faced by Australian growers in accelerating on-farm efficiency and safety.
Context:
Agriculture continues to report the highest number of serious injury and disease claims, including some unfortunate fatalities. Most injuries involve muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons. These injuries not only impact worker wellbeing but also lead to increased compensation claims, insurance costs, absenteeism, and lost productivity.
This project aims to explore and evaluate innovative technologies that enhance on-farm worker safety and wellbeing while improving operational efficiency.
Objectives:
1. Significantly reduce musculoskeletal injuries
To decrease the incidence of joint, ligament, muscle and tendon injuries among farm workers through the implementation of innovative technologies, directly addressing the most common workplace hazard in horticulture.
2. Enhance operational efficiency
To improve farm productivity and minimise labour disruptions during critical periods (e.g., harvest) by integrating and evaluating technologies that address physical limitations and streamline manual tasks.
3. Enable commercial pathways and scalable adoption
Establish clear commercialisation pathways and deployment strategies to support the industry-wide adoption. For non-commercial research organisations, this may include forming partnerships with commercial entities capable of scaling and delivering the solutions beyond the life of the project.
The project will focus on high-labour horticultural industries including:
- Apples
- Berries
Possible Approaches:
Participants are encouraged to develop innovative solutions or technologies, the below listed are some of the technologies that could be used:
- Physical augmentation technologies (e.g. exoskeletons).
- Harvest assist and autonomous support platforms (e.g. self-propelled harvest platforms, lightweight autonomous carts, follow-me robots).
- Collaborative robotics for repetitive or precision tasks (e.g. robotic arms or semi-autonomous tools for pruning, thinning).
- Wearable sensors and real-time fatigue monitoring (e.g. AI-powered sensors to track posture, movement, or fatigue levels).
What's in it for you?
This is a global challenge, and Hort Innovation is willing to collaborate with innovative companies, researchers, universities, and technical solution providers. A successful collaboration could mean funding for the solution through the Hort Innovation Frontier co-investment mechanism. It is important to mention that although the implemented solution must be available in Australia, the implementation can be carried out anywhere in the world.