Planting roses with the help of a robot has been possible for some time now. But John van de Ven, the founder of Aventec, has taken the technology one step further. With Festo as a partner, he uses the latest technologies and innovations. And the VTUX valve terminal is just right for this.
As an electrical engineer, Van den Ven is very familiar with robots and image processing, and has implemented various process automation projects with Aventec. In 2013, in the early days of Aventec, Van de Ven was mainly involved in interim project management assignments. Today, a lot of his development work involves greenhouse horticulture. Customers from his former employer – whose company no longer existed at the time – approached him, and he was soon working at full capacity with a machine for growing potted roses. These machines had been in operation for several years and were now in urgent need of maintenance and repair. After an initial assessment, it turned out that more than that was needed, and Van de Ven began development.
"To ensure the continuity of these cutting machines, the machines had to be rebuilt with new components. Many of the parts used had already reached the end of their service life. We then decided to redesign the machine with modern servo technology, which is controlled by the Festo CPX-E plc platform, together with a modern image processing system." Many parts had to be reprogrammed from scratch with the vision of a fast and reliable machine that customers could rely on for many years to come.
For better control of deliveries and the future reliability of the machines, he decided to manufacture them himself. To give you an idea of the complexity, we will briefly explain exactly what the machine does. At the start of the line, the rose branches are hooked into a transport system by hand. Each cutting is hung in a holder and transported to one of the processing cells. There they are positioned in front of the image processing system, where they are rotated 180° to create a 3D scan. This results in optimal cuttings. These are then trimmed by a robot and planted directly into new pots. All this happens at breakneck speed and with extreme precision. The complete machine with four "cutting stations" can cut and plant up to 5,200 cuttings per hour.