British manufacturer Downs has won one of the four gold medals at this year’s digital edition of the French show’s innovation awards.
The winner in the harvest to storage category was awarded to Downs for its CropVision, an optical sorter that sorts up to 100t/hr of unwashed potatoes for quality before storage.
The result of four years of development, industrial cameras coupled with an artificial intelligence algorithm analyse the entire surface of the product to classify it precisely according to clods, stones, waste, cracks, colour, etc.
The winner of the gold medal in the soils and crops category was the Smart-Apply intelligent spray control system from US firm Smart Guided Systems. The technique, which uses LiDAR to identify crop leaves, has individual nozzle control.
Kuhn won the gold medal in the livestock category for its Aura autonomous self-propelled mixer wagon and gold medal number four went to the French made VitiDrive controller.
It is not yet known whether the four gold medal winners will be put under the spotlights at the next physical edition of the French show which is planned for November 6-10, 2022.
It is possible they will be flagged up at SIMA Tech Connect, a digital platform on June 10 this year, and that a new edition of the innovation awards will be staged for the real show next year at the Parc des Expositions in Paris.
