Red berries Interpretation Centre, Huelva
Costa de Huelva Cooperative transforms the soft fruit production process into an immersive experience using Virtual Reality and 3D holography.
Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza Costa de Huelva, a leading organisation in the agri-food sector specialising in the production of soft fruits in Huelva, has created a new Soft Fruit Interpretation Centre in Lucena del Puerto.
The aim of the project is to bring visitors closer to the reality of the sector and showcase, in an innovative and engaging way, everything behind the production, harvesting, packaging and export of soft fruits.
Turning a complex, seasonal process into an accessible and interactive experience
One of the main challenges was making a process visible that, due to its seasonal nature and the specific characteristics of the crops and production facilities, could not be fully showcased in person.
In addition, the cooperative wanted to highlight its level of technological innovation, including technologies such as artificial intelligence-powered computer vision for fruit sorting.
The new centre therefore needed an experience capable of:
- Clearly and immersively showcasing the blueberry production process.
- Allowing several visitors to enjoy the experience simultaneously.
- Making the technology easy to use for all types of visitors, without complex interfaces.
- Ensuring straightforward management by the centre's staff.
- Creating a strong visual impact from the very beginning of the visit.
- Integrating innovative technology that reflected Costa de Huelva's commitment to agri-food innovation.
Multiplayer Virtual Reality and 3D holography to experience the process from the inside
INVELON developed a tailor-made solution based on two complementary technological experiences: multiplayer Virtual Reality and 3D holography.
Eight Pico 4 Enterprise headsets were deployed, connected and synchronised to allow groups of visitors to enjoy an immersive, gamified experience of the blueberry production process simultaneously.
The experience includes a 360º video that provides an insight into the entire production process, as well as a kiosk mode designed to eliminate the usual setup complexities associated with Virtual Reality headsets. This allows visitors to simply put on the headsets and start the experience directly and intuitively.
In addition, the PICO Business centralised control and monitoring system has been implemented, enabling the centre's staff to monitor the status, connection and progress of all eight devices in real time, as well as prepare, launch and restart the experiences.
The experience is completed with a 3D holographic welcome device. The hologram features a 3D welcome avatar that creates an immediate visual impact on visitors and allows multimedia content, logos and videos to be easily updated according to the different activities, events, presentations or delegations visiting the facilities.
The combination of both technologies transforms the Interpretation Centre into an interactive space capable of bringing the reality of farming and the agri-food industry closer to visitors in a visual, immersive and accessible way.
An immersive experience that places innovation at the heart of agri-food education
The project has successfully enabled the opening of the Red Berries Interpretation Centre, featuring a multiplayer Virtual Reality experience for up to 8 simultaneous users and an interactive 3D hologram.
The solution has achieved the proposed accessibility and innovation objectives, making it possible to explain a complex and seasonal production process in a simple, immersive and impactful way.
- Key results include:
- Capacity to accommodate groups of up to 8 visitors simultaneously in the VR experience.
- Centralised monitoring of all devices from a single control station.
- A simplified user experience through kiosk mode, making the technology accessible to all visitors.
- Integration of immersive content, 360º video and gamification to explain the blueberry production process.
- Incorporation of a 3D hologram as a welcome and communication feature.
- Development of a modular and scalable technological architecture, ready to be adapted in the future to other soft fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.
- A new educational resource that strengthens Costa de Huelva's position as a benchmark for innovation and technology within the agri-food sector.
At the project's opening ceremony, the Cooperative's President, Romualdo Macías García, highlighted the opportunities offered by the virtual experience developed at the centre in terms of education, training and the experiences it will provide both for schoolchildren visiting the facilities and for the professionals working there.