About the innovator

Cybertronica (CYBRES GmbH), is German private high-tech research and innovation company, specialising in the area of advanced sensors based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, environmental monitoring and bio-technological systems. The company targets a close-loop development, where all necessary scientific knowledge as well as mechanical, electronic and embedded programming skills and equipment are concentrated in one area and closely integrated with each other. Company developed ground and underwater autonomous robot systems, manufactured small-series solutions for power management, sensors and communication, functional materials. CYBRES performs research and technological development towards own solutions related to remote sensing and environmental monitoring and has several products on international markets. Researchers from CYBERTRONICA have a large record of European research activities, in such projects as I-Swarm, GOLEM, EvoBody, ANGELS, CoCoRo, SYMBRION, REPLICATOR, ASISSI|bf, Flora Robotica, and subCULTron projects, cooperated with CA PERADA, AWARE, FOCAS and COBRA. Company was a finalist of the ICT innovation radar initiative 2016.

What is the innovation

The technology of phytosensing and integration into a bio-hybrid system has been developed in the FloraRobotica project. The obtained environmental and plant sensor data are used in the control system that imposes different stimuli on plants and actuates artificial mechanical structure near the plants (e.g. robotic systems). These plant sensors include water movement, transpiration, photosynthetic and electrophysiological sensors. The last one represents the innovative methods of reading sensory information from a plant. CYBRES developed two approaches based on tissue impedance measurements and bioelectric signals. Together with the soil/air humidity, light, temperature, CO2 they create a system of physiological and environmental sensors connected to a computational unit. The system has TRL9.

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Out of the lab. Into the market

This is a multiple-step approach and included production of test systems and distribution among our partners and customers; public reporting/discussions in different mass-media; video/review production, also by professional TV. Several scientific university laboratories dealing with plant research were also targeted by this initiative. Multiple exhibitions are targeted and performed: the “Sensors”, “HYBRID MATTERs”, “PLANT EXPO”, "Water" and others. Important are the CE/FCC/CCC/WEEE certificates and generation of a “production file” (based on corresponding documentation). For production of this system the corresponding documentation was produced. It included application notes, scripts for user scenarios, different descriptions. Currently, the phytosensing and phytoactuating system is on the market.

Benefits of participation in Horizon 2020

Our goal has been to integrate our technological developments into a broader vision of bio-hybrid systems, interfaces to natural and artificial eco-systems and interactions with biological organisms. These challenging goals cannot be approached by a single organization - they require interdisciplinary teams. Participation in FP7 and H2020 research and innovation projects has allowed a very efficient organisation of RTD and innovation works; a representation of the developped technology to broad audiences; perfroming necassary certification and registration steps; and, raising a public awareness of such cutting edge research and innovation activities.

This innovation was funded via H2020 project flora robotica

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