Woke up this morning craving some Starbucks. So Kalli and I took the tram to Starbucks. We got an excellent cool lime refresher there, which they only have in Europe. Then we took the tram to meet back up with the group and head to our first train to end up in Utrecht to visit the company Aurea Imaging. This was a very cool building because many small start-ups use the building, and companies rent out the rooms, which helps make a profit in return. They also offered us free lunch, which I really enjoyed. We listened to a presentation about precision agriculture and how drones are involved in farming. The company was started in 2016 in Utrecht, where there are 28 colleagues and a focus on phenotyping and orchards. Aurea’s complete solution is to collect, model, execute, analyze, and interpretation. Aurea has two client groups first is breeders, which consist of flowers, vegetables, and potatoes. The second client is the growers who focus on smaller areas, such as apples and pears. He talked about how they like to perfect these areas before adding new ones to the grower group. In the bigger group, The Breeders, there is a digital photo type. The cycle includes flowering, vegetation growth, health and closure, crop health, temperature, and emergence. A real-world example of how they use their technology is flower and potato detection. Through this, they can see how many flowers there are and where they are growing. I found it very interesting how for the potatoes, they can see how many and already calculate how many french fries will be made out of them. This could be very good for businesses to plan and forecast for the future. I could see there is an issue, though, if there was a climate disaster and it ruined the crops. It could hurt companies’ revenue in the long run. Overall, I found this company very interesting, and in the future, I would love to work in a building like this. They had a gym, free food, and many fun and comfortable chairs.
Next, we are headed to Utrecht to walk around and see where Sophia lives and likes to go. It was definitely very similar to Amsterdam but a little less touristy. I especially loved the ice cream Dr. Bursic, and Frank got us. Finally, we ended the day being locals from Amsterdam riding a bike. It was interesting, to say the least!