Health and Functional Quality of Life 
Industrial Processes. Smart Factory
Mobility and Logistics
Industrial Informatics 
FEROX aims to support workers with collecting wild berries and mushrooms in wild and remote areas of Nordic countries. The project solution will utilize the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI), data and robotics technologies. The need for a solution that improves the human experience is substantial. As wild berries and mushrooms grow in forests, the access to these products is very challenging. The picking work is generally conducted by foreign workers and hobbyists and performed manually. It requires physical capabilities and patience in varying weather conditions during the summer season. In addition, as the workers are from foreign countries with very little knowledge of the work locations and the native language, some of them may suffer from anxieties of being injured or lost in the forests. Moreover, the optimum locations for the workers to pick the products are uncertain, which exerts added pressure on the workers to locate themselves optimally as their pay relies entirely on the amount of berries and mushrooms they collect daily.
OBJECTIVES
- Ob1. Development of an innovative solution based on the integration of AI, computer vision and drones to monitor harvesting activities while incorporating improvements in the working conditions of berry pickers and mitigating the risk factors and threats to their safety during berry picking activities.
- Ob2. Identification of needs, hazards and challenges that workers face on a daily basis in terms of occupational safety, with the aim to reduce the severity of problems and injuries by trying to provide workers with faster and more efficient first aid.
- Ob3. Definition of the baseline technical and functional requirements and identification of all components to be integrated into FEROX, enabling the design of the architecture and interface of the final solution.
- Ob4. Development of the necessary technical services for the solution of problems as well as for the improvement of the working conditions of the workers, bearing in mind the idea of assisting in their daily tasks.
- Ob5. Validate the design and engineering approaches in two phases, focused on (i) monitoring, navigation and locating; (ii) logistics optimization and physical assistance.
- Ob6. Evaluate the impact of the FEROX use cases on workers, measuring improvements in workers’ health, considering first aid and anomaly detection times.
- Ob7. Dissemination and communication of project updates and results and establishing connections and interactions with DIH networks and Made in Europe Partnership, achieving a wide impact of the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities.
- Ob8. Development of a thorough exploitation plan for the full-scale deployment of the project results, overcoming any possible barriers regarding the future acceptance of our new technology in Europe.
The FEROX consortium covers the full competences chain, from technology development to use-case evaluation and demonstration. The project brings together 9 partners from 7 countries, creating a highly multidisciplinary network of renowned universities, research institutions, SMEs and a leading end-user association. The FEROX consortium holds a proven and provable record of science, technology and market impact including high impact research, patented and published inventions, early innovative applications of new technologies with a track-record on creation of new markets.
 FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER, Italy Coordination R&D |  TAMPERE UNIVERSITY, Finland R&D Use case Validation |  UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA, Spain Technical manager R&D |
 INGENIARIUS, Portugal Technology provider Exploitation |  FINNISH GEOSPATIAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, Finland R&D Use case Validation |  CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY, United Kingdom SSH Specialist R&D |
 DEEP FORESTRY, Sweden Technology provider Exploitation |  SPARK AI, Ireland Technology provider Exploitation |  ARKTISET AROMIT, Finland Dissemination Use case Validation |
The team of researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), made up of researchers from the Institute of Industrial Automation and Informatics (ai2 Institute) and the Center for Research in Production Management and Engineering (CIGIP), will focus, within FEROX, on both in the technical management of the project and in the development of main technologies. Specifically, the main tasks that will be carried out at the technological level consist of defining the system architecture to meet the requirements of the solution proposed in the project; and in the adaptation and implementation of a fleet management system previously developed in other projects with mobile robots at the UPV to work with a fleet of drones. Additionally, they will also collaborate on tasks such as the development of algorithms for AI models, or the selection of the necessary hardware and software for communications systems. This last aspect is especially relevant in the project due to the challenges presented by working with drones in the forests of northern Finland, such as the difficulty for these vehicles to navigate and transmit data under the dense cover of treetops or other Technological limitations such as low mobile coverage in some areas or the range of drone telemetry.