Bootcamp briefing 2023

The initial situation

In 2025, the next Upper Austrian State Garden Show will take place in Schärding under the title INNsGRÜN. This will be the first state garden show that, in addition to presenting the entire botanical spectrum of garden art, also wants to place special emphasis on the creative application of forward-looking technological solutions in an ecological environment.

With this in mind, the organisers of the State Garden Show are inviting the IMM community to join them at the upcoming Future Tech Bootcamp from June 26th till June 29th 2023 to develop the first innovative technical solutions that will help to optimise the care and maintenance of the plants and can then be worked out in detail and implemented in the next step during further events with partners from the region. This process is part of the INTERREG-project “Grenzüberschreitender Innovationsraum³” within the funding line INTERREG Programm Bayern-Österreich 2021-2027.

Our challenge

The Future Tech Bootcamp will focus on designing an autonomous and cost-effective robotic solution that helps to support the health and growth of plants.

This should be able to use sensors to monitor and analyse the condition of the plants, and AI technologies such as machine learning to detect and respond to plant anomalies and needs autonomously. Possible measures it could take could include, for example, automatic watering and fertilisation or even combating a pest infestation.

The solution developed should consist of commercially available components and be easy to programme and configure. In addition, it should be designed in such a way that it can be integrated into "raised beds" with a base area of 1x2 metres as well as into the infrastructure of the State Garden Show, whose individual components can ideally even communicate intelligently with each other.

The next steps

After the Future Tech Bootcamp, 5 further event formats are planned, in which students of the HTL Andorf will work on the concrete implementation and production of the smart raised beds with the support of representatives of other partner organisations. Anyone who wants to can get further involved in the further steps of development.

The result generated is to be a collective work that will be placed under a Creative Commons licence in the spirit of the open source movement. After the State Garden Show, 5-6 of the raised beds will be exhibited in the Technology and Start-up Centre Schärding, part of Innovationsraum³. All the others will be made available to technology-oriented secondary schools.

The entire event planning up to the start of the State Garden Show 2025 at a glance:

Contact

The main contact persons for the project are our briefing partner Andrea Berghammer (CEO of INNsGRÜN / Landesgartenschau Schärding) and our location host Tamara Schneider (INN.KUBATOR Passau).

About us

 

Landesgartenschau Schärding

The municipality of Schärding has been awarded the contract for the organisation of the Upper Austrian State Garden Show 2025 by the government of Upper Austria. The 100 percent subsidiary of the municipality of Schärding, the Landesgartenschau Schärding GmbH, serves as a link between the state of Upper Austria as the main sponsor and the municipality and as such has been entrusted with the organisational realisation of the event.

The garden show will be open from April 25th 2025 to October 5th 2025 (164 days). Between 240,000 and 280,000 visitors are expected.

The garden show grounds, with a total of just under eleven hectares, include the Schlosspark, the Orangeriepark, the Grüntal and the Innlände. The Baumgartner brewery is making its plot in the Grüntal available, and the Schärding Kurhaus is making parts of the Kurpark, which is otherwise not open to the public, available.

More about www.innsgruen.at

 

Grenzüberschreitender Innovationsraum³

In order to make companies in the rural border region around Passau, Ried and Schärding fit for the future, a cross-border Innovation Space³ is being set up in the INN.KUBATOR business incubator in Passau, in the Techno-Z Ried and in the TGZ Technology and Incubator Centre Schärding. The project is funded by the INTERREG programme Bavaria-Austria 2021-2027 with 1.25 million euros.

In the Innovation Space³, makers and local companies are invited to discover and use the potential of digital technologies and tools in the environment of the Internet of Things (IoT) to ensure their connectivity to an economy characterised by transformation. The focus areas of artificial intelligence / digital technologies (Passau), robotics (Ried), sensor technology (Schärding) and the associated equipment at the individual locations complement each other.

More about the project Grenzüberschreitender Innovationsraum³