INESC TEC wins Entrepreneurship and Innovation award once again

The 12^th edition of the Prémios de Empreendedorismo e Inovação by Crédito Agrícola featured INESC TEC at the podium, this time with the Modular-E robot winning the category “New Technologies in Agricultural Production”.

The awards recognise innovative projects in the agricultural, agro-food and forestry sectors, promoting competitiveness, modernisation and the transition towards more sustainable production models.

Developed by INESC TEC through the TRIBE Lab research infrastructure, Modular-E is an innovative robot designed for permanent crops – particularly mountain vineyards. It stands out for being modular, electric, autonomous and transportable in a light vehicle. Thanks to an intelligent navigation system, the robot can operate on uneven terrain and in situations where there is no GNSS signal, carrying out tasks such as transport, precision spraying, vegetation cover management, precision monitoring, and variable-rate fertilisation at plant level.

Filipe Neves dos Santos, INESC TEC researcher and head of the laboratory infrastructure behind the project, attended the award ceremony held on 26 February in Lisbon, at the Pavilhão de Portugal. The ceremony also welcomed Simão Soares, President of P-BIO (Associação Portuguesa de Bioindústria) and Sérgio Raposo Frade, President of Grupo Crédito Agrícola.

Modular-E continues to gather national and international recognition. In 2025, at the FIRA (the Global Event for Agricultural Robots in Action), it secured second place in the competition “Best World FIRA Robot – People’s Choice”, with more than 500 votes. At the same event in 2024, it also won second place in the “Best World FIRA Robot” category. Nationally, Modular-E received the Prémio Inovação Agricultura 2024, an initiative by Timac Agro, Jornal Expresso and SIC.

It is worth recalling that INESC TEC had already won first place at the 11^th edition of the Crédito Agrícola awards, in the “Food Safety” category, with the technology Pocket-Vet.