R H E A N e w s l e t t e r 1

1. What’s RHEA? RHEA is a FP7 project devoted to the application of Precision Agriculture techniques. For that, RHEA is focused on the design, development, and testing of a new generation of automatic and robotic systems for both chemical and physical –mechanical and thermal– effective weed management in agriculture and covering a large variety of European products including agriculture wide row crops (processing tomato, maize, strawberry, sunflower and cotton), narrow row crops (winter wheat and winter barley) and woody perennials (walnut trees, almond trees and olive groves).

The consortium brings together the expertise and knowhow of 19 working groups belonging to 15 organizations (Large-scale integration Collaborative project) from 8 European countries with a deep background in topics covering specific expertise in robotics, agronomy, perception and action, manufacturing of agricultural equipment and end-users. The consortium includes 8 SMEs that share 45% of the total budget and an industrial partner.

2. Newsletter presentation This newsletter is planned to be regularly distributed to announce the main activities in the RHEA project and is devoted to the RHEA participants, researchers and technicians in precision agriculture techniques as well as final users of agriculture equipment. This newsletter will be issued every 6 months and it is expected to count on the finest writers in the RHEA consortium.

3. Activities The RHEA project started on August 1, 2010 and held its kickoff meeting in September 6, 2010, hosted by the coordinator, CSIC, in Madrid. Representatives of the partners as well as people responsible for different activities of the project proposal from CSIC participated in the meeting. The opening session was held at the CSIC Headquarters Auditorium. The CSIC Deputy Vice-President for International Affairs Professor Maria Angeles Gomez opened the session and presented the CSIC institution. The EC project officer Mr. Oscar Barreiro-Mouriz gave a presentation with the title “General information on FP7 projects”. Finally, the project coordinator, Pablo Gonzalez-de-Santos, introduced the project and appreciated the contribution to the project proposal of all the partners, the

RHEA NewsletterRobot fleets for highly effective agriculture and forestry management

Issue N. 1January 2011

Inside this issue:

1. What’s RHEA? ...................... 1

2. Newsletter presentation ...... 1

3. Activities ............................... 1

4. News from WPs .................... 2

5. Incoming activities and events ................................... 2

The research leading to these results has received funding from the

European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under Grant Agreement nº

245986

R H E A N e w s l e t t e r 2

project officer, his closest colleagues and the personnel of the CSIC Legal Unit.

The meeting continued at the Centre for Automation and Robotics located in Arganda del Rey, Madrid. The groups involved in the project introduced themselves and the Work Package leaders presented the work planned in each WP. In September 7, 2010, the Scientific and Technical Board met by the first time and the First General Assembly took place as well. Information about the rights and duties of the boards were the main parts of the both meetings.

The first technical meeting took place in Vienna, Austria, in November 22-23, 2010. It was hosted by CogVis and the Technical University of Vienna and was attended by researchers from all the RHEA partners. In this meeting the consortium made a significant effort to fix the technical foundation of the project that will be developed in the following 42 months. The result of the ongoing work will be the Deliverable 1.1 on Technical requirements, specification and project breakdown that is expected to be issued by the end of February 2011.

4. News from WPs Following the timing of the Work Packages, within the first six months of the project, the consortium is working to complete the WP1 on Technical Requirements Specifications and System Breakdown and to start three task of WP-9 devoted to dissemination (Task 9.1), exploitation (Task 9.3) and project web site management (Task 9.5).

In this period, four important points have been tackled:

1. Launch of the project web site as the deliverable D9.15 due in October 31, 2010

2. Conclusion of the deliverable D1.1 ”Technical requirement, specifications and project breakdown” due by January 31, 2011

3. Milestone M1, overtaken by a positive assessment of the consortium about the technical final features of the system included in D1.1. The assessment is to be taken at a General Assembly.

4. Release of D9.1 on Dissemination plan and report.

5. Incoming activities and events In the next six-month period (February-July, 2011) the consortium has to fulfil the following goals:

Milestone No. Title Beneficiary Delivery

date (Month)

Comment

MS2 System design CSIC 12

The design of the overall system is completed

Poster of the RHEA Kickoff Meeting

RHEA Kickoff-opening ceremony at the CSIC headquarters

RHEA Technical meeting at CSIC-CAR

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Del. No. Deliverable name

Bene

ficia

ry

WP

no.

Nat

ure

Diss

emin

atio

n le

vel

Deliv

ery

date

(M

onth

)

Del 2.1 Description of the MissionPlanner and action strategies CSIC-CAR 2 R PU 9

Del 2.2 Description of the Mission Supervisor CSIC-CAR 2 R PU 12

Del 3.1 Description of the Remote Sensing Equipment CE 3 R PU 12

Del 3.2 Description of the camera-based Ground Sensing Equipment UCM 3 R PU 12

Del 3.3 Description of the laser-based Ground Sensing Equipment CE 3 R PU 9

Del 4.1 Description of the High-Level Decision Making System CSIC-CAR 4 R PU 9

Del 4.2 Description of the Low Level Actuation System and the Device System

UF 4 R PU 12

Del 5.1 Ground Mobile Unit: features and assessment measurements CNH 5 R PU 9

Del 5.2 Aerial Mobile Unit: features and assessment measures AR 5 R PU 12

Del 5.3 Safety system of the Mobile Units: definition and assessment measures

UPM-EIA 5 R PU 12

Del 6.1 Architecture and Infrastructures of the Communication and Location

FTW 6 R PU 9

Del 6.3 Description of the Localization functions and definitions of all pre-integration

SAP 6 R PU 12

Del 6.4 On-board network system and relevant pre-integration tests FTW 6 R PU 12

Del 7.1 Specifications of the Base Station UPM-EII 7 R PU 9Del 9.2 Dissemination plan and Reports CSIC-ICA 9 R PU 12

Del 9.6 Modifications to the consortium agreement (I) CSIC 9 R CO 12

Del 9.9 Exploitation plan (I) CNH 9 R PU 12Del 10.1 Periodic report (1) CSIC-CAR 10 R PU 12