Continental Expands its Autonomous Mobile Robot Business with an Agriculture Product Line

By OEM Update Editorial June 15, 2022 4:51 pm IST

• New Partnership with Octiva established, a participation of Priva, market leader for horticulture process control

• Tedious and repetitive work in greenhouses will be a thing of the past: Autonomous Mobile Robot “Horticulture” will be available in the market from 2024.

At the LogiMAT 2022, the international intralogistics tradeshow, end of May, technology company Continental announced that it has started the volume production of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) for intralogistics. Now, at the GreenTech 2022, the international horticulture tradeshow, from June 14 to 16 in Amsterdam (Netherlands), another milestone was reached: On June 13, Continental and Dutch-Belgian technology company Octiva signed a collaboration agreement to develop autonomous mobile robotic solutions for horticulture applications. They will become part of Continental’s second product line “Agriculture” in the market of Autonomous Mobile Robots. Octiva was formed from the merger of Priva’s robotic solutions and Octinion’s agricultural robotics and focuses on integrated horticulture robotics solutions. Joining forces, the partners will develop an industry-leading, autonomous and reliable solution that will shape the future of horticulture.

“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,” says Tom Coen, CEO of Octiva. Pierre Pomper, Head of Autonomous Mobile Robots at Continental: “With this partnership we take the next step in our growth strategy for AMRs. Entering this new market will allow us to further enhance our AMR solutions that we offer to customers globally. We are open to continued cooperation with other strong partners to provide our autonomous platform to diverse markets besides intralogistics and horticulture.”

Partnership with Octiva to automate and enhance processes in greenhouses

In the future, Octiva will focus on developing market-specific applications that allow to automate tedious and repetitive work in greenhouses such as cutting of leaves or monitoring the crops for which it is hard to find enough workers due to labor shortage. By joining forces with Continental, Octiva accelerates the development and industrialization, creating the reference platform for greenhouse automation. For Continental, the collaboration is the next step in the company’s growth strategy for autonomous mobile robots. “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,” says Meiny Prins, CEO of Priva. 

Continental will provide the motion platform that allows these applications to move autonomously and safe within greenhouses. “Octiva’s market expertise allows us to enter this substantial growth market and to develop the exactly right platform for this market,” says Andreas Mandl, Project Lead for Continental. Market entry is planned in the year 2024.