This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Norway's first fully automated facility for vegetable production was put into operation last fall. This spring, the first products hit store shelves.
"In this facility, no one touches the lettuce from the time it is sown, grown and packaged until it ends up on the store shelf and is finally opened by the customer at home in their kitchen," says SINTEF researcher Ottar Bakås. He and his research colleagues have studied the status of and opportunities for automated indoor vegetable production in Norway. The facility is operated by Himmelgrønt AS, a collaborative partnership between the supermarket chain Coop Norge and the technology company Avisomo, and is located in Gardermoen, near Oslo.
Its location enables the company to distribute goods quickly and efficiently to all the chain's stores around the country. Now SINTEF has analyzed the potential for further automation in Norway. "It is still common for many tasks to be done by people, but technology has evolved to the point where we can automate manual tasks," says Aleksander Lillienskiold, a former SINTEF researcher who also participated in the project.
"We've looked at the degree of automation that exists today, what we can expect in the future and what technology we'll need going forward," says Lillienskiold. The project has focused on "vertical farming"—a designation for indoor farming in a controlled environment where crops are grown in stacked layers. "Growing indoors makes it possible to produce crops year-round.
This means we don't need to import from abroad. And there are no pesticides or insects, so when the lettuce is ready for harvest, it can just be cut and bagged right away," says Lillienskiold. In Avisomo's facility, robots and automation carry out all the tasks.
Light, air and water are automatically adjusted to create the best possible growing conditions. The vegetables are grown in a multilevel shelf system. One seed is placed in a unit, and the roots grow downward, where they have good access to nutrients via flowing water.
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