12 Jun Winners of Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge 2022 announced
SAIL is driving the development of emerging technologies to break new frontiers in the agri-food industry.
We are excited to announce that, as part of Enterprise Singapore’s Sustainability Open Innovation Challenge (SOIC) 2022, a Malaysian startup consortium Blixify-Meraque and Brazilian startup Sofien have emerged as the winners of our Corporate Partner CNH Industrial’s challenge statement on automation for oil palm harvesting!
The agri-food industry is known to be the final frontier of digitalisation, with many growing opportunities for digital transformation. There is a growing demand for solutions that do not yet exist, to make agriculture more efficient and sustainable. An example of this can be found in the palm oil industry, where there is currently a lack of solutions in the mechanisation of oil palm harvesting. The harvesting process remains predominantly labour-intensive and involves workers cutting fruit bunches from the trees using knives on long poles, resulting in significant fruit loss and safety issues.
CNH Industrial, a world-leading equipment and technology company for agriculture and construction, had partnered with SAIL to find solutions through SOIC 2022 that leverage robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence to mechanise and automate the process – improving productivity, efficiency as well as worker safety.
SOIC 2022, organised by Enterprise Singapore and powered by Agorize, saw an overwhelming response, receiving over 500 submissions from more than 80 countries worldwide. Following a rigorous selection process, Blixify-Meraque and Sofien emerged as the first and second placed projects, winning cash prizes and CNH’s support in developing their technologies to support the agri-food sector. Blixify–Meraque is a Malaysian based consortium that had designed a pruning and harvesting machine using computer vision and AI technology for colour and texture analysis, accurately detecting the palm oil fruit’s ripeness before harvest. Sofien is a Brazilian startup that had created a cutting device attachment equipped with cameras and sensors to detect and monitor the palm oil fruit’s ripeness for efficient harvesting.
The announcement was made last week at the SOIC 2022 Closing Ceremony as part of Ecosperity Week 2023. Read more here.
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