The monitoring of the degree of ripeness of tropical fruit is one of the key aspects in managing operations at the packing houses of importers in order to offer the market fruit at the desired quality and ripeness.
ILIP has dedicated its intervention entitled “Smart RipeTrolley: monitoring the ripening of tropical fruits with RFID sensors” at the Tech Stage forum organised by the Berlin trade fair as part of Fruit Logistica.
The company unveiled the Smart Ripe Trolley, an innovative IoT (Intelligence of Things)system that monitors the ripening process of tropical fruits (in particular avocados) for industrial uses, whose function is based on RFID tags and sensors installed on a trolley. The results of the control are shown in real time on a digital platform. This new solution is an evolution of the Smart Ripe (developed by ILIP in 2019), which, differently to the Smart Ripe Trolley, has been designed for the retail sector, to determine the degree of ripeness of the avocado on the shelves and applies to the individual packaging using the RFID tag sensor integrated into the pack.
The Smart Ripe Trolley project is the result of collaboration between the ILIP Research and Development Department and the Innovation Department of Westfalia Fruit Group, a multinational specialised in the production and sale of avocado. “After the first presentation at the 2019 Fruit Logistica Tech Stage of the Smart Ripe in trays for the individual fruit for the retail sector” –Luigi Garavaglia, ILIP’s R&D Manager says-“we were contacted by Westfalia Fruit, who described their need to assess the progress of ripening of avocados in the ripening rooms, which are a sealed environment containing ethylene, without invasive tests on sample of the fruit and without opening the room, because doing so each time interrupts the treatment and modifies the atmosphere, requiring a subsequent restoring of parameters.”
To take the readings in wireless mode, ILIP has collaborated with Radiosense (which analyses wireless data) to develop neuron processing software: the trolley holding 128 avocados is wirelessly connected to a remote IoT computational platform, namely neuron-type software with artificial intelligence. The Smart Ripe Diagnostics software yields interactive feedback, generating an automatic alert in the event of detections outside parameters, thereby allowing the operator to intervene on the ripening software. The correction will soon become automatic, thanks to direct interaction between the neuronal software and the management software. The first tests on avocado (Hass variety) in a room with ethylene were started by ILIP with the partner Westfalia Fruit back in 2020 and are still ongoing.
For further information:
ILIP Press Office c/o fruitecomMichela Dongi and Eleonora [email protected]| [email protected]+39 348 4074079 | ILIP Marketing OfficeCarlotta [email protected]