| Project Detail |
The pace of innovation has never been greater in Precision Agriculture. Yet, a key operation that all farmers perform as it is the process of lifting Ag-machines through the use of a jack, still remains manually operated. Manual jack operation is a big contributor to agriculture’s high fatal injury rate, i.e. 12 fatal injuries/100,000 workers. With the total annual cost of fatal injuries estimated €962 million/per year for EU’s economy, the need of farmers for an automated solution that increases their safety has never been greater.
Hence, our customers, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of Ag-machinery, in their effort to upgrade their product offering to farmers, urgently need a fully automated agricultural jack with enhanced safety features. More so, they require the new jack solution to be fully compatible with the ISOBUS protocol, the communication protocol for tractors and Ag-machines.
We at SIMOL, after years of R&D, developed Novel Jack the first fully automated jack in the market. Novel Jack is equipped with an innovative safety monitoring system, supported by active and passive safety procedures optimised for fast response. Novel Jack spots a dedicated ISOBUS module that will enable OEMs to easily integrate Novel Jack with their Ag-implements; hence ensuring wide market adoption.
Novel Jack is at TRL-6, with the system being optimised in our facilities. With a feasibility plan developed under a Ph-1 grant, we now seek a Ph-2 grant of €1 million to advance Novel Jack to TRL-9. The final outcome of this project will be a fully automated jack certified for its’ mechanical performance and ISOBUS compatibility to industrial standards. To speed-up commercialisation, we will showcase our product to world’s biggest OEMs that have shown great interest in our technology. Through Novel Jack commercialisation in Europe and USA, we will grow our business by €14.5 million in gross revenues and €5.1 million net profits generating a total of 23 jobs, by 2025. |
