Title Farming investment and may become the first company to set up a chain of urban indoor or vertical farms which can compete with the likes of Whole Foods Market and other greengrocers. Harvest Automation This company developed a mobile vehicle designed around the needs of agricultural companies, but then it sold the technology to NextShift, which has broadened its application to industries beyond agriculture.
Drones A variety of drone companies have been customising their vehicles for agriculture, including the largest drone maker, DJI, which is what the link is to. But while there is potential for their application, drones still have limitations such as flight time.
ABB and Heliospectra Innovations in lighting are probably going to be critical to the success of indoor farming of many types, and multimillion-dollar businesses like Helispectra are partnering with industrial giants like ABB oto make their greenhouse operations more efficient.
Autonomous Solutions Inc ASI develops crucial technologies such as that which drives CNH’s autonomous tractor. It also adopts other technologies, such as mesh networking, which may influence other companies in the industry to do the same.
Husky Clearpath Robotics provides this unmanned guided vehicle that, in this instance, has been customised to deliver “precision irrigation” which, as the term suggests, can save significant amounts of water for farms and large-scale gardens.
Bühler and Microsoft Although this moves us a bit further downstream, closer to the consumer, food processing is also seeing significant amounts of innovation, including this one where Microsoft and Bühler are working to reduce the amount of food that is wasted. Fraunhofer Cucumbers are among the most popular salad vegetables, and picking them presents challenges because they are soft. But if
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Features anyone can solve the issues, it’s the boffins at the Fraunhofer Institute.
invested a very large amount of money in Blue River’s lettuce farming robot technology.
Volvo Volvo demonstrated a self-steering truck for sugarcane harvesting in Brazil. The automaker seems keen on such technology since it has developed similar self-driving technology for the mining industry as well.
Indigo This is another company we have yet to feature on the website, but that’s just two so far. Interestingly, this company’s systems hold out the promise of “pesticide-free farming”, which is obviously something everyone can support.
Gamaya Sugarcane is one of the most valuable crops globally, and cultivation probably cover millions of acres. This company provides cloud-based software to monitor and manage large sugarcane fields.
Smart Ag Another sign that computers are entering the agriculture sector in a big way, Smart Ag offers cloud connectivity and monitoring services for driverless tractors and can, as far as we understand, fully automate regular tractors. ZF Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen is a big name in the traditional automotive world. A few months ago, the company demonstrated its concept for a driverless tractor and other related technologies.
ABB The robotic arm being used on the Singaporean farm in question is not being perched on eggs and used to hatch them, as the headline might suggest. It’s more a story about material handling, which is where robots are increasingly getting involved.
Universal Logic Primarily a software company, Universal Logic has developed a robotic solution which is proving popular with strawberry growers, with Agricultural Robotics ordering 100 of its “Neocortex” systems.
Terrasentia Many new innovations and great business ideas are emerging from universities, and this one is from the University of Illinois. It’s a relatively small mobile robot and its makers have set up a company for it called EarthSense. John Deere Arguably the most well-known name in agricultural machinery, John Deere has
Spread Spread was probably the first company to demonstrate a viable urban farming business model. It was so long ago that we can’t find the story we did about it, so this is just a link to the company’s website.
Marijuana The demon weed was always going to become a big business once it was decriminalised and legalised, and so it has happened that quite advanced farming technologies – particularly in greenhouse management – have been developed in the sector.
Abundant Robotics Picking apples may sound like an idyllic way to pass the time, but as a full-time job in the heat of the summer, not so much. Hence this company’s apple-picking robot could become a must-have for orchard owners.
Sensors and chips Tiny computers such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino are being used to create highly sophisticated hardware-and-software systems that are within the purchasing power of many farms. The link leads to just one example.
Connectivity As well as powerful chips and sensors available at low-cost, networking and connectivity technology – such as LoRa technology – is also available at much more affordable prices. All of which is leading to farms becoming IoT fields. Fanuc Another example of a “downstream” robotic system, this story proved quite popular as it tells of Fanuc robotic arms being used to process and pack lettuce for a Spanish company, enabling it to reduce its reliance on finding scarce human labour. www.roboticsandautomationnews.com