What will the inspector of the future look like? At Gearbox in Maasdijk, they are designing him in the form of AI-controlled robots. With the help of smart software, fixed and mobile cameras in the barn and greenhouse, and extensive digitisation of quality, the company enables optimal data-driven cultivation. "We provide specialised employees in the form of hardware and software, who perform quality control in specific positions within the company," explains Simone Keijzer, co-founder and CEO of Gearbox.
The company started out with GearVision. "This machine allows us to automate the inspector in the shed," says Simone. "At the same time, you can improve quality control, because with GearVision you can inspect every individual product in your sorting line according to the parameters you have entered into the AI, instead of randomly sampling with the human eye. From the outset, we set to work combining AI with hardware and user-friendliness, enabling us to use our products practically as an extra employee. We started at home in the garage, where co-founder Johan Kreeft was already working on inspection machines for open field cultivation and I contributed my software knowledge."
The GearRover is another good example of quality control in the form of AI, which selects the roses that need to be cut from a trolley with a camera mounted on it. "Every morning, the grower can indicate in the software the degree of ripeness he wants to have cut that day, after which the GearRover selects the roses via the camera and AI. Using a laser on top of the vehicle, it then indicates the roses that the employee can cut. With roses, cutting at the right stage of ripeness is very precise. By digitising this selection process, we can see how dependent you are as a grower on the choices made by your employees. And how much more efficient production becomes when you use AI to make these choices. The GearRover replaces the six to nine months you need to train each new employee."
The GearRover enables growers to deploy their employees much more efficiently while also providing data that human employees cannot produce. This has an impact on the way entrepreneurs deal with labour. "Your people become operators," explains Simone. "This makes them much more effective, because the administration is automated and the software helps with quality selection. The GearRover sees every rose and doesn't miss a thing. Thanks to machine learning, it remembers every millimetre in the greenhouse and can analyse with increasing accuracy. This makes the reports increasingly intelligent and allows growers to really manage based on data, rather than their employees' sense of the roses' ripeness."
Gearbox started in Maasdijk and has never left. However, the company has grown out of the garage and moved to premises surrounded by greenhouses. ‘We develop everything ourselves at the company,’ says Simone. ‘We have a young team of 32 people, with an average age of around thirty and the necessary high-tech horticultural experience. There are constantly new ideas, which is great to manage, and with our employees we also have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in-house. We develop our products in relatively short periods of time, in close collaboration with our customers, which is only possible if you have a dynamic and flexible team that knows the capabilities of the software and hardware."
The GearCore Software platform with AI can be used for both vegetables and flowers. This is how we want to make a real difference and maintain the lead of Dutch horticulture with our high-tech innovations.
"Our vision is that data-driven cultivation ensures much more efficient and sustainable production," Simone continues. "Thanks to input from the sensors, feedback from employees and guidance from the grower, the software becomes smarter every day, which also increases confidence in these types of systems. Growers who invest in data-driven cultivation gain a leading position, including in terms of quality. What's more, they can deploy their employees much more efficiently. This applies to both ornamental and vegetable growers. Our GearRover platform, in combination with GearCore's cloud software, can therefore be used anywhere. This is how we want to make a real difference and maintain the Dutch horticultural sector's lead with our high-tech innovations."
Source: Stories from the Horticultural Entrepreneur Award 2022
