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Press Release07 April 2022Digital IndustriesPlano,
Texas, USA
Siemens enables underwater farming revolution with digital twin solutions
Nemo’s Garden is a startup focused on sustainable underwater-based cultivation of crops. Using Siemens’ Xcelerator and a digital twin, the Nemo’s Garden team are able to test concepts without the need for physical testing, enabling rapid design iteration.
Nemo’s Garden was founded in 2021 by Sergio
Gamberini, President of Italian scuba diving equipment manufacturer, Ocean Reef
Group, and his son, Luca Gamberini. Their team of engineers, divers and
scientists have been working to prove the viability of cultivating herbs, fruit
and vegetables underwater. Nemo’s Garden’s key innovation, a sub-aqua biosphere,
is a unique type of underwater greenhouse, able to harness the positive environmental
factors of the ocean – temperature stability, evaporative water generation, CO2
absorption, the abundance of oxygen and inherent protection from pests – to
create an environment ideal for crop cultivation.
The team has not only successfully harvested
a variety of crops from its prototype biospheres, but also discovered that
plants grown in this environment are nutritionally richer than those grown
traditionally. The next big hurdle in achieving their goal was to turn this prototype
into a solution that could be deployed globally; however, they didn’t want to
wait another 10 years to make that happen.
Harsh winters, short summers and initial
seafloor-use permit limitations capped Nemo’s Garden to one growth cycle a
year, which has meant only one innovation cycle per annum. Design changes,
lengthy physical testing and heavy manual monitoring processes during the
growth cycle led the Nemo’s Garden team to seek out ways to speed up their
innovation and scale the operation. The team reached out to TekSea’s
Matteo Cavalleroni for insight on how to leverage cutting edge technologies to
achieve their goals. After the initial consultation, Siemens was invited to
join the project, leveraging the Xcelerator portfolio of software and it’s
services to help Nemo’s Garden get to the next stage of development and get
ready for industrialization/commoditization.
“When I first saw Siemens’ digital twin
technology, I was mesmerized. Nemo’s Garden is a one-of-a-kind system and we
need to adapt to each environment where it is to be installed. If you can model
that environment virtually before you start, you can foresee the challenges and
address them in the best way,” said Luca Gamberini, Co-Founder, Nemo’s Garden.
“We have seen benefits in understanding the flow of water around the shapes of
our biospheres. We have a greater understanding of the points of stress on the
structure around the biospheres. We also understand how the different
interactions of the solar radiation, the temperature and all the physical
factors, act on the plants. All thanks to the ability of the digital twin to
replicate our system.”
A comprehensive digital twin of the Nemo’s
Garden biosphere has been built that encompasses not only its design evolution
using Siemens’ NX™ software, but also enables simulation of the growing
conditions within it, the impact of the equipment on the body of water, as well
as the full environment in which they are installed – all accomplished using
Siemens’ Simcenter™ STAR-CCM+™ software. The Nemo’s Garden team are no longer limited
by weather conditions, seasonality and short growing seasons or limitations on
diving and monitoring. Adaptations to the biospheres can be tested in the
virtual world, enabling the team to refine the design at a massively
accelerated rate.
Monitoring at the edge
In addition to engineering the physical biosphere,
Nemo’s Garden also needed to optimize and scale the processes for growing,
tracking, and harvesting the plants. To create a sustainable business that did
not rely on sending trained divers to collect data, a fully digital, automated
approach was created that drew on Siemens’ extensive experience in leveraging
software to automate traditional farming practices.
Existing video of the growing cycles along
with reference data from traditional farming operations of the same target
crops, at various growth stages and health conditions was analyzed using Siemens’
MindSphere service. From this, Siemens was able to train a machine learning
algorithm to monitor plant growth as well as the environmental conditions
within the domes.
When this algorithm is deployed onto Siemens’
Industrial Edge computing devices in each biosphere, the plants can be
monitored via a cloud-based dashboard throughout the season, from anywhere, in
real time. Next season, these Industrial Edge devices will be connected to
actuators – to automatically adjust air circulation, humidity, irrigation and
nutritional dosing throughout the whole season. This will be the foundation of
a global agricultural service, optimized for subsea operations and tuned for
each of the world’s oceans.
Through true adoption of digital
transformation, Nemo’s Garden has taken something that began as a light-hearted
challenge over dinner with friends and are turning this unique concept into a
commercially viable subsea farming platform that can sustainably be deployed
globally. While the newly designed biospheres will not be deployed until the
next growing season, thanks to the comprehensive digital twin of the growing
environment the team continues to push forward with plans to further optimize
their designs and automate their processes for global deployment.
“Digitalization isn’t only for big companies, it
is for all companies. In fact, great gains can often be realized in
smaller or start-up companies. The work we do with startups can amplify
the impact they have on the world, aiding in and speeding up innovation,” said
Eryn Devola, Vice President of Sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries
Software. “It is easy to get excited when you we find a passionate team with
human-centered technology that is working to feed people while having a
positive impact on the environment.”
Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where
engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The
Xcelerator portfolio helps
companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide
organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to
drive innovation. For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software
products and services, visit
siemens.com/software
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Siemens Digital Industries (DI) is an innovation leader in automation and digitalization. Closely collaborating with partners and customers, DI drives the digital transformation in the process and discrete industries. With its Digital Enterprise portfolio, DI provides companies of all sizes with an end-to-end set of products, solutions and services to integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. Optimized for the specific needs of each industry, DI’s unique portfolio supports customers to achieve greater productivity and flexibility. DI is constantly adding innovations to its portfolio to integrate cutting-edge future technologies. Siemens Digital Industries has its global headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, and has around 76,000 employees internationally.
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare. From more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. Siemens also owns a majority stake in the publicly listed company Siemens Healthineers, a globally leading medical technology provider shaping the future of healthcare. In addition, Siemens holds a minority stake in Siemens Energy, a global leader in the transmission and generation of electrical power.
In fiscal 2021, which ended on September 30, 2021, the Siemens Group generated revenue of €62.3 billion and net income of €6.7 billion. As of September 30, 2021, the company had around 303,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at
www.siemens.com.