It is driven by industry’s determination to adopt on-farm technologies, ramp up export capacity and develop future leaders in non-traditional areas of horticulture.

Located at the University of Sydney, HICRIS is initially hosting a $10 million commitment to projects in robotics and autonomous technology that aim to increase farm efficiencies.

Work at the centre includes, but is not limited to, developing technology that can detect foreign matter; robots that can map tree-crop architecture; and groundbreaking autonomous weed identification and eradication capabilities. We are also investigating capabilities such as automated crop forecasting to predict the best time to harvest and ground penetrating radar sensors to measure factors such as soil water content and root systems.

HICRIS was officially opened by Assistant Minister for Agriculture Senator Anne Ruston on 6 October 2016, and is located within the University of Sydney’s internationally-recognised Australian Centre for Field Robotics. It aims to attract Australia’s brightest minds in engineering and science, and currently has six research fellows, five PhD students and six technical staff. It also acts as a training facility for Australian growers and the future generations of students who are passionate about creating innovative solutions to drive the future of farming.

Ensuring industry access to the outputs from HICRIS research is key. Hort Innovation is working with growers, the university and the Australian Government to ensure the technology the centre is producing is commercially available in the not-too-distant future.

The projects

The Horticulture Innovation Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (HICRIS) is currently delivering three large-scale projects that aim to make various production practices more efficient:

• Multi-scale monitoring tools for managing Australian tree crops – Industry meets innovation (ST15004);
• Evaluating and testing autonomous systems developed in Australian vegetable production systems (VG15059);
• Using autonomous systems to guide vegetable decision making on-farm (VG15003).

Concurrently, Hort Innovation is working with the horticulture industry to inform research, technology and adoption-assistance needs.

HICRIS is funded by Horticulture Innovation Australia using the vegetable levy and funds from the Australian Government.