Global technology company Continental has announced its partnership with Dutch-Belgian tech company Octiva to develop autonomous mobile robotic solutions for horticulture applications.
The collaboration will become part of Continental’s second product line - Agriculture in the market of Autonomous Mobile Robots, a press release from the company said.
Under the partnership, the parties aim to develop an industry-leading, autonomous and reliable solution that will shape the future of horticulture, the release added.
In the future, Octiva will focus on developing market-specific applications that automate tedious and repetitive work in greenhouses, such as cutting leaves or monitoring the crops for which it is hard to find enough workers due to labour shortage. At the same time, Continental will provide the motion platform that allows these applications to move autonomously and safe within greenhouses.
Pierre Pomper, Head- Autonomous Mobile Robots, Continental, said, “We are open to continued cooperation with other strong partners to provide our autonomous platform to diverse markets besides intralogistics and horticulture.”
Tom Coen, CEO, Octiva, said, “Adding Continental’s competence in safe and autonomous mobility to our market leading applications will allow us to offer our customers new features and thereby enable additional benefits for them. Moreover, it allows us to implement a focus driven strategy which will lead to a faster market entry.”
Octiva was formed from the merger of Priva’s robotic solutions and Octinion’s agricultural robotics and focused on integrated horticulture robotics solutions.
Meiny Prins, CEO, Priva, said, “Our partnership with Continental, a strong partner and industry leader, allows us to establish a strong product line with the clear objective to become the market leader for autonomous horticulture robot solutions.”
Earlier at the LogiMAT 2022, the technology company had announced the commencement of volume production of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) for intralogistics.