Cyber-Physical Systems in Insect Farming Operations

Scaling insect farming often comes down to overcoming three persistent challenges: unpredictable environmental conditions, labour-intensive monitoring, and inconsistent production quality. Cyber-Physical System (CPS) solutions address these issues by unifying sensors, automation, and real-time control into a single coordinated system. Explore how a service-oriented, fully integrated, and open human-robot working environment can support and enhance the entire production pipeline within Industry 4.0 insect farms.

What are Cyber-Physical Systems?

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) bridge the physical and digital components, creating a continuous flow of data, feedback, and control that enhances operations. Unlike technologies such as IoT or AI, which primarily focus on collecting and analysing data, CPS provide a fully integrated framework that enables machines to make autonomous decisions, adapt to changing conditions, and optimise performance in multiple ways. By connecting sensors, machines, and software in a unified system, CPS deliver actionable insights that help farmers optimise resource use, streamline operations, lower costs, and reduce environmental impact, turning traditional farming into a smarter, more responsive, and highly efficient process.

From Concept to Reality: CoRoSect System’s Architecture in Insect Farming

The CoRoSect solution is built on an industrial CPS designed to support every stage of the insects’ lifecycle within insect farms. The system replaces repetitive or demanding tasks, such as crate transferring and handling, environmental conditions monitoring, larvae detection and separation or insect feeding, with specific automatic robotic-based procedures. The system is flexible, allowing it to be adapted to different insect species and farm configurations.

The CoRoSect architecture is structured into several interconnected components:

Shop Floor Layer

The shop floor represents the physical environment where all insect-rearing processes take place. It includes the equipment used in daily operations, robots, mechatronic systems, automated vehicles, as well as human operators. The Smart Shop Floor expands this with IoT infrastructure, enabling connected devices to operate in a coordinated, safe, and collaborative Industry 4.0 human–robot environment. The key elements include:

I-Crates. Rearing crates equipped with IoT sensors that monitor environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, and CO₂.
Insect Handling Cell. Consists of a visualisation and inspection module for capturing images of the crates, tools attached to the main robot for feeding and interacting with insects, and a Manipulation Robot (M-Robot) that performs handling tasks inside the cell.
Crate Handling Cell. Moves selected i-crates from the rearing shelves to the AGV for harvesting or cleaning. This cell includes the stacking/de-stacking robot (D-Robot) equipped with a gripper.
Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV). Transports crates between the rearing, harvesting, and cleaning areas.

Each component is connected to dedicated controllers, which link hardware to the network, enabling remote data collection, monitoring, and command execution.

The shop floor network connects these operational technologies (OT) with the IT layer.

IT Layer

The IT layer integrates all shop floor components with the system’s data infrastructure. Its role is to harmonise data, control processes, and provide higher-level intelligence. Key IT components include:

Digital Twins (I4.0 Asset Administration Shells). Digital representations of shop floor assets, defining interfaces for sending commands and retrieving information.
Management Level, which incorporates Data Management Module, Process Management Module, Decision-Making Module and CoRoSect-Specific Modules (provides advanced functionalities such as object detection, routing management, machine learning and deep learning model training, simulation support, and predictive analytics).

Another key element of the CoRoSect solution is the Human–Robot Collaboration framework. At this level, CoRoSect develops two systems:

An augmented reality simulator that helps workers and machines learn specific tasks and processes more effectively.
A route manager that connects to CoRoSect’s object detector and communicates with AGVs to adjust their routes, preventing accidents or blockages.

Why CoRoSect’s Solution Marks the Beginning of a New Era

By fostering effective collaboration between humans and robots, the CoRoSect solution not only advances insect-rearing practices but also optimises production processes, enhancing sustainability and creating new economic opportunities. More than 50 scientific and industrial robotics stakeholders have already benefited from CoRoSect’s demonstrations, highlighting its broad impact.

CoRoSect’s novel Integrated Cyber-Physical System is capable of supporting over 97% of key task-planning and real-time adaptation scenarios in insect farming. The system’s robotic components achieve more than 90% accuracy in larvae classification, driven by an innovative multimodal sensing approach with detection rates also exceeding 90%.

Together, these achievements illustrate how CoRoSect is setting new standards in insect-farming automation and marking the beginning of a new era of intelligent, sustainable production.

Conclusion

Integrating Cyber-Physical Systems into insect farming represents a significant step toward smarter, more efficient, and sustainable production. The CoRoSect architecture demonstrates how a human–robot collaborative framework can streamline operations across the entire insect life cycle. CoRoSect delivers a secure, robust solution tailored to the specific needs of end users. Its modular design allows it to adapt to different challenges, making it scalable, expandable, and applicable across various sectors and use cases. CoRoSect technologies were piloted, tested, and validated through four piloting environments. Find out more about the CoRoSect’s use cases and pilot activities.

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Cyber-Physical Systems in Insect Farming Operations+

What are Cyber-Physical Systems?

From Concept to Reality: CoRoSect System’s Architecture in Insect Farming

Why CoRoSect’s Solution Marks the Beginning of a New Era

Conclusion

Insect farming stories you won't find anywhere else

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