Hosted by the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) as strategic partners, Tevel Technologies Aerobotics, a global leader of tech-based full harvesting solution, will showcase its patented Flying Autonomous Robots (FARs) technology at Food For Future Summit 2022 held at Dubai Exhibition Centre, to support the UAE and the Middle East region with food security. 

With the recent launch of FARs in the Middle East region by Tevel, the company will provide innovative harvesting solutions combined with cutting-edge algorithms, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and data analytics, that have the potential to revolutionise the agriculture industry in the region.

It is estimated that the human population will grow by 40 percent to 9.7 billion by 2050, requiring fruit production to double its production. Agricultural employment will be reduced in half by 2050, resulting in a shortage of around 5 million fruit pickers. Shortage of pickers causes more than 10 percent of fruits worldwide not to be harvested.

As part of the demonstrations at Food For Future Summit, Yaniv Maor, CEO, Tevel, said: “It is estimated that growers worldwide lose 30 Billion USD in sales a year as fruits are not picked on time. If you look the UAE, it imports about 90 percent of its food and population is around 10 million and rising rapidly. The nation ranks 35th globally in terms of food security according to the Global Food Security Index. With the launch of Flying Autonomous Robots (FARs), the UAE will be able to achieve significant savings as fruits will be picked with the help of technology.” 

Tevel’s on-demand fruit harvesting solutions fulfill the unmet needs for labour at the right time and at a lower cost, making orchard management easier and more profitable. Tevel’s Artificial Intelligence based Perception algorithms helps to analyse the state of the fruit; the vision algorithms help detect the fruit, foliage, and other objects which includes fruit classification such as size, ripeness, whereas the manoeuvre algorithms support optimal trajectory planning and execution. 

“We are looking for looking for collaboration with the public and private sector in the region towards in-field greenhouses technology and innovation solutions for crop management and harvesting. Our technologies such as harvesting optimisation can help in fleet management for harvesting based on orchard data and balancing algorithms support the forces applied on the robot by foliage and fruit”, added Maor. 

Tevel has raised USD20 million from global investors including Kubota, Forbon, and AgFunder, among others and is looking for further investments from the UAE market to upscale its solutions and make them available to the UAE and the GCC region. The company is also looking to collaborate with the public and private sector in order to ensure a faster application of this technology across the Middle East region.