6.5-Million Horizon Europe’s AGROBOOST Project Officially Launches

6.5-Million Horizon Europe AGROBOOST Project Officially Launches with Dr Dimitrios Argyopoulos

AGROBOOST is a new €6.5 million, 5-year Horizon Europe project on Agricultural Robotics and AI for Safer, Inclusive and Sustainable Farming, lead by School faculty Dr Dimitrios Argropoulos. The official launch of AGROBOOST (Agricultural Ground-bReaking sOlutions based on roBotics and augmented reality for boOsting sOcial sustainability and competitivenesS while increasing the safeTy of workers), took place at University College Dublin (UCD) on December 11, 2025. This multidisciplinary initiative, which unites 18 partners across Europe, focuses on leveraging advanced robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Augmented Reality (AR) to modernize agriculture, combat labor shortages, and prioritize worker safety. The project commands a total budget of €6.5 million, supported by €5 million in EU funding alongside Swiss contributions.

^{Dr Dimitrios Argyropulos, project leader, speaking at the AGROBOOST project launch in UCD on 11th December, 2025.}

AGROBOOST directly addresses highly challenging agricultural tasks through six diverse pilot validation campaigns across six countries:

• Mushroom selective harvesting (Ireland) using fully autonomous, vision-guided robots.

• Intelligent Autonomous Robotic System for Harvesting of Strawberries Crops (UK) utilizing a gamified Virtual Reality (VR) environment for training and telepresence.

• Orchard tree pruning and flower thinning (Portugal) leveraging AI-based robotic systems.

• Mechanical Autonomous Selective Weeding (Greece) in organic vegetable farming.

• Autonomous Management of Poultry Production, Health and Welfare (Belgium) using combined fixed and mobile robotic platforms.

• Automated Work on the Ground in Steep Vineyards (Switzerland) exploring lightweight, morphing compliant robots to reduce human intervention in challenging terrain.

A core component of the project is the deployment of €480,000 in financial support to third parties (FSTP) through two Open Calls to integrate external innovation, fostering a wider ecosystem of stakeholders including SMEs, startups, and research groups. These two rounds aim to fund a total of eight projects, providing up to €60,000 for each recipient over a six-month implementation period.

AGROBOOST aims for substantial improvements, including achieving a target reduction of  30% in workplace accidents and demonstrating a 35% increase in the inclusivity of developed technologies across vulnerable demographic groups. 

AGROBOOST officially runs for 60 months, from November 1, 2025, to October 31, 2030.

It is funded under the Horizon Europe Programme HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment under Grant agreement ID: 101182954. 

Dr Dimitrios Argyropoulos is Programme Director of the MSc Digital Technology for Sustainable Agriculture and leads the d-Lab: Digital Agriculture & Bioresource in the School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, with focus on the application of digital technology to the agri-food and bio-resource sectors (i.e., sensor and sensing systems, computer vision, mobile robots and deep learning).