Page 37 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

With a market that small and several firms competing in the space, at first glance it appears futile
for a company to invest time and money into the market if it wants to remain viable. But Koselka
says lettuce thinners have been a good first step toward developing other robotic products for
much larger agricultural markets.

Currently, his firm is developing a
mechanical weeder, using technologies
similar to those used in the firm’s lettuce
thinner, that is close to being

commercialized. Vision Robotics is also
working on more complex technologies,
including a grape-vine pruner.

The market for robotic strawberry pickers is
larger than the lettuce thinner market, and
adoption could occur faster because Harvest
CROO plans to offer robots as a service, and
70% of U.S. strawberry growers are investors
in the company.

“As soon as we can prove it works, our 2019 model TerraSentia

growers are telling us they will take our

service as fast as we can deliver,” Bissett said. “We believe it is a good business in and of itself.

The fresh strawberry market in the United States is $3 billion. It’s a market conducive to robots.”

Full commercialization of Harvest CROO’s strawberry picker is scheduled for 2022.

With more than 38,000 acres of strawberries in the United States – about 88% of which are in
California with the rest in Florida, according to the California Strawberry Commission – Bissett

says to harvest all of the strawberries in the United States, his firm would need 2,000 harvesters
each with 16 robots. One harvester can do the work of 30 human pickers at a rate of 8 acres per
day, picking one plant every 8 seconds. In addition, Mexico has 20,000 acres of strawberries to
target with his service.

Chinmay Soman, CEO and cofounder of EarthSense, helped develop a robot called TerraSentia,
while at the University of Illinois in 2017. Last year, the firm was beta testing 25 robots. “We are
working with early-stage applications,” Soman says, such as crop breeding and field scouting.
EarthSense hopes to conduct field-scale pilots this year with the robot for crop scouting, and then
in 2020, the firm hopes to have a limited commercial release. Each robot is expected to
eventually sell for about $5,000. “We want the robots to be as affordable as professional-grade
drones,” he says.

Today’s shortage of agronomists means scouting occurs sporadically, with perhaps only 2-5% of
the field scouted, Soman notes. “When you miss the early stage of a disease, it can be difficult
for the crop to recover.”

To fill the shortage, TerraSentia will roll through entire fields underneath the crop canopy taking
videos for computer analysis to determine recommendations for fertilizers, pesticides, and
herbicides.

www.Agri-Pulse.com 35