KAS Magazine published an extensive article about Gearbox and our latest addition to the product family, the GearRover, in its June 2021 edition. Read the entire article in KAS Magazine or digitally:
Five years after its foundation, Gearbox is entering a new phase in its existence. The 'R&D agency with green fingers' is no longer a start-up, but a mature high-tech company that helps horticultural entrepreneurs to approach their daily work in a smarter and more data-driven way. How? With a new generation of digital employees. This is not a pipe dream, but reality. Meet the digital inspector, cultivation advisor and harvest assistant.
Gearbox was born in 2016. "In a garage, where all good ideas originate," laughs Simone Keijzer. A nod to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of tech giant Apple, among others. The garage of this world-famous duo was located in Los Altos in Silicon Valley, while that of Simone Keijzer and co-founder Johan Kreeft
is located in Maasdijk. Five years later, Gearbox is still in Maasdijk, but the garage has been replaced by a larger office with a workshop and its own R&D lab. In addition, the number of employees has grown from four to more than twenty, and Gearbox's innovations are no longer just on paper, but actually in the greenhouse.
Eyes in the greenhouse
What has happened in the past five years? A lot, according to Simone Keijzer. "From the outset, our goal was to support nurseries, breeders and trading companies in their daily work. To enable them to work in a more data-driven and smarter way. We have now demonstrated that this is indeed possible." Gearbox has developed a broad product line that has been extensively tested in practice, and the smart solutions are already in permanent use at various nurseries. These ‘employees of the future’, as Keijzer calls Gearbox’s products, can support or even take over numerous daily tasks. Cameras provide visibility in the greenhouse, algorithms make the processes intelligent, and robots perform the actions. " If you want to work in a more data-driven way in the greenhouse, you need to have good, reliable eyes in the greenhouse," says Keijzer. "You can't just rely on feelings or opinions, you have to be able to rely on data. We help with this by providing vision solutions, smart software with AI and robots."
With GearVision, GearSense, GearRover and GearStation, growers really have endless possibilities. GearVision is a digital inspector for assessing and sorting horticultural products. The product has been on the market since 2018, but in recent years it has been further developed for use on more crops (in addition to cucumbers and tomatoes, it can also be used for peppers, onions and bulbs, among others) and expanded to include the assessment of internal quality and nutrients (such as brix).
GearSense provides insight into the greenhouse by combining cameras, sensors and smart algorithms to assess the growth development of the crop in the greenhouse in real time. This allows you to determine the ripening speed of a tomato, map the ripeness of an aubergine or count the number of stems per ripeness stage in a gerbera greenhouse. The third product, the GearRover, can be used to inspect the crop or to harvest flowers directly. The device is placed on a tubular rail and drives through the crop, with a camera spotting flowers or vegetables that are ready for harvest. This is, of course, dependent on the ripeness that you, as the grower, have set yourself.
In developing the GearRover for harvesting roses and gerberas, Gearbox worked closely with renowned nurseries such as PortaNova, Berg Roses, van Veen Gerbera and Colours of Nature. "That collaboration definitely accelerated the development process," says Simone Keijzer. The GearRover is now in production and the harvesting assistance trolleys for roses, gerberas, tomatoes and peppers, among other crops, are being 'broken in' so that they can start assisting with harvesting in greenhouses this autumn.
Deploying people optimally
And then there is the GearStation, which can take on routine tasks. These include logistical processes such as sorting or packaging, which often place a considerable burden on employees. By leaving this work to a robotic solution, employees can be deployed more efficiently within the company. However, Keijzer understands that companies do not switch to robotics overnight. "As an entrepreneur, it's about making the most of the people you have. Where employee turnover is high, or checks are very burdensome or labour-intensive, the GearStation with Vision and AI can support or even (partially) take over the quality checks and decisions of employees, resulting in more reliable output and associated reports. Then it's a matter of weighing up: where do you really need human hands and where could robots offer a solution? And which crop are we talking about? Based on market demands, we have been working over the past few years to come up with various solutions using our hardware and software building blocks. The result is this product line." The investment by Orange Wings, the company of former Nature's Pride CEO Shawn Harris, was not insignificant in the realisation of this new generation of digital workers. "When we started to grow as a company and
As the demand for smart solutions in the market increased, we essentially had two choices: either we had to focus on just one or two products, or we had to add extra people to our team to help realise the entire product line. We chose the latter option, because Gearbox products are all made with the same software and hardware building blocks and therefore reinforce each other technically. We then went in search of a committed investor, someone who believes in our story and who can also help us grow and put Gearbox on the international map. Shawn is the perfect match for us, bringing much more than just a financial boost. Her knowledge and experience in the sector and her entrepreneurial spirit are really helping us with Gearbox's plans for the future.
Tomato harvesting robot
Orange Wings' investment will enable Gearbox to maintain momentum and continue developing its product line with a team of specialists. "We want to expand our solutions to more crops and introduce a harvesting robot for vine tomatoes, among other things, next year. In principle, the goal is to launch a new product every year and also add regular enhancements so that the family of digital workers continues to grow. First in the Netherlands, and soon in the rest of the world as well."
